Animals and Women Feminist The

by Carol J Adams

  A radical critique of speciesism — at least as feminists have made it — would lead us to question why what are called “ universal human rights ” should be confined to humans at all, who grants and defines them in whose interest, and why they are necessary at all. As a radical critique of power and exploitation it would imply the necessity of abolishing power and violence rather than affirming a select “ right to freedom ” — a concept developed by the leading culture of power and violence, European “ civilization, ” in recognition of the unfreedom it creates (for others). 21 What is required is a fundamentally different human attitude toward reality, 22 and thus a radically different conception of the human self, rather than a legal charter that defines what we can safely continue to destroy. What is required is an attitude that is not premised on the human subject in relation to an object world and the consequent human interest, let alone “ right, ” to dominate, exploit, and destroy, which is axiomatic to Western human ideology. Violation of the “ object world ” — be it of groups of humans, animals, or nature — cannot be rectified by adjustments in the object world — a wider “ zoning ” of protection. It can be stopped only by stopping the violators ’ violating, that is, by a fundamental reconception of human subjectivity.

  Hence we need a radical political struggle not only against the so-called “ rights ” of the powerful, but equally against the legitimations of power and dominance — the conviction that the human interest in exploitation and dominance is “ natural ” and the abuse of power a matter of course. Neither is significantly curbed nor even challenged by an extension of human or animal rights. On the basis of current political practice, the definition of rights not only defines nonrights — that is to say, the (legitimate) abuse of power and the (lawful) exploitation of all and everything which falls beyond the crucial boundary of rights — it simultaneously creates and maintains power and privilege above the rights so defined: the right to legislate and to define these “ rights. ”

  Identity Politics or Cultural Biologism

  Current trends in cultural politics, however, seem to be going in the opposite direction. Not only is there confusion as regards the uses and abuses of universalism and notions of equality, but since the triumphant advent of academic theories of difference there also seems to be increasing confusion about the significance of differences. Political movements challenging the “ differences ” in the rights and treatment, that is, the social and political inequality of specific groups in our societies — of black people in white society, of women in patriarchal society, of lesbians and gay men in heterosexist society, of disabled people in ablist society, of prostitutes in a hypocritical society, etc. — have used the concept of political identity to underline the systematic, collective political histories of oppression of these groups. We have called ourselves blacks, women, lesbians, gays, whores, cripples, etc., not to define who we “ really are, ” but as an act of political resistance. Naming the identities these oppressions create has been a means of the political struggle to dismantle these forms of oppression and eventually to overcome these discriminatory identities.

  Yet what originally was a political instrument of resistance and liberation, challenging existing power structures, is in the process of becoming an end in itself, a classification of “ object ” groups. Political — or increasingly now “ cultural ” — identities are being celebrated as the true identity found, a means of insisting on personal and group difference. Cultural differences are being fetishized and used to construct new typologies of circumscribed groups — under the guise, as one critic puts it, “ of the irreproachable concept of ‘ culture. ’ ” 23 “ Multiculturalism ” has become the catch phrase of Western liberalism, signifying a multitude of different cultural identities existing “ side by side. ” As a mere pluralism of objectified cultures it seems to hold the democratic offer of an identity for everyone, replacing any notion of political inequalities that require political struggles for equality.

  In other words, we have reverted to a human zoology of cultures. We seem to think that in emphasizing cultural differences and constructing cultural identities — a classification of cultural species — we are pointing to something more defensible and harmless, indeed “ positive, ” as compared to so-called biological differences. We seem to think that the harm in racism lies in the use of biological criteria of classification. Yet we know that even the racist theories of the past, including those of the Nazi regime and its scientific “ race theorists, ” never were exclusively biological, just as the so-called “ biological ” distinctions of zoology are not exclusively biological. The problem of racist ideology lies less in the fact that “ biological ” criteria are being used than in the use they are being put to: constructing typologies of kinds of people in the interest of social and political discrimination and instrumentalization. Biology has had the role of signifying the natural, the given, the innate, the unchangeable, and thus the “ objective ” grounds on which to construct classes, races, and sexes, thus to justify a classist, racist, and sexist political order. The critique of biologism is not that there are no biological differences between people — which is a platitude of the first order — but that the science of biology, like all sciences, is political. An arbitrary selection of biological features constructs as “ biological types ” what are in fact identities/classes/groups created through social practices of dominance and exploitation. Typology systematizes (scientifically rationalizes and generalizes) political and social roles, thus enabling them to be politically institutionalized as structural inequality based on “ difference. ”

  Classification is neither neutral, being put to political use only “ thereafter, ” nor is it objective: it is itself an act of social and political discrimination and thus the expression of the subjectivity of power. What is said to be a quality of the object is in fact a difference construed in relation to an implicit norm constituted in the classifying subject. Racism and sexism as political practices construct another race and another sex, a race of “ others ” and a sex of “ others. ” The “ objective ” biological features — the objective grounds for classification said to reside in the object — are said by a social, political, and ideological subject class to reside in a social, political, and ideological object class, thus to justify the subject class ’ s systematic practices of dominance and exploitation.

  Neither is the “ evolutionary ” aspect missing: cultures too are hierarchized synchronically to reflect a fictional diachrony of progression, an alleged evolution of human culture from primitive to civilized, from ahistorical to historic, from native and traditional to modern and dynamic, where “ modern ” is synonymous with “ Western ” and “ advanced, ” signifying a contemporariness that simultaneously boasts historic tradition.

  In the same way, the “ emergence ” of the modern European nation-states was represented by their architects and advocates in the nineteenth century as an evolutionary step forward, an “ adaptation ” to the global conditions of the modern worldscape for which the crumbling multiethnic empires were no longer adequate: the drama of the survival of the fittest fulfilling itself in the political realm, with the most “ advanced ” European cultures or nations “ naturally ” leading the way into modernity and survival in modern times, and modernity “ naturally ” meaning “ most advanced. ” 26 Yet the new global conditions that required adapting to were not climatic conditions in the environment, but the economic and global-political conditions created by an expanding world capitalism: free-trade liberalism or those “ component national units in the developed world ” that constituted it, such as British industry, the American economy, German capitalism, etc. 27 To “ survive ” did not mean to survive as a nation among nations, but as one contemporary put it, “ to ascertain the means by which any community has attained the eminence among nations. ” 28 That is to say, to maintain an already achieved position of supremacy and superiority over, rather than coexistence with, other nations — “ national advant
age ” in a race among “ nations. ” 29

  Thus one of the three criteria that according to historian Eric Hobsbawm were necessary to qualify as a nation — besides an historic association with a current or recent state and an old cultural elite possessing a written national literary and administrative vernacular — was the “ proven capacity for conquest. ” 30 As Hobsbawm comments, “ nothing like being an imperial people to make a population conscious of its collective existence as such . . . Besides, for the nineteenth century conquest provided the Darwinian proof of evolutionary success as a social species. ” 31 In other words, behind the positivist, scientific claim of the formula “ state = nation = people ” stood a politics of expansion, exploitation, and conquest diametrically opposed to the formula ’ s democratic appearance.

  The political argumentation that we have called biologist explicitly focuses on the quasi-scientific description of biological, cultural, national, ethnic, etc. differences — much aided by identity politics and multiculturalism — as the allegedly neutral and pre-political starting point, with the political conclusions to be drawn remaining the tacit assumption. Nationalism and the nationalist idea — also developed by leading intellectuals in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western Europe — combines with the typology of different cultures to form a political theory that demands exclusive “ living space ” for each community as a “ natural ” consequence of their difference. Although the construction of European nation-states — be it through revolution, as in France, or from “ above ” — politically unified disparate communities under one government, these communities have since been educated to develop a sense of “ national identity. ” Theories of national history and culture as well as the imposition of a national language combine to constitute a concerted program of national inculturation, which make national borders seem “ natural, ” the communities within them “ homogeneous. ” Many Europeans today indeed believe that France, England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, etc. are “ natural ” homogeneous communities, unified by a language, a common history, and a common will to belong together — despite even present-day evidence to the contrary, not to mention the evidence of history.

  The racist — and invariably nationalist — ideologues in Europe today do not argue predominantly on biological grounds; they argue on cultural grounds with a vengeance. Capitalizing on the acceptability of the concept of multiculturalism, the extreme Right in Europe has made “ ethnopluralism ” its own catch phrase, albeit with a different (but equally unspoken) attitude as to the spacial organization of this pluralism and a different political program concerning the multicultural or ethnopluralist societies of the West. 24 Cultural differences that have grown historically and politically are used to define and circumscribe communities or ethnicities — to argue for their hermetic preservation according to the logic of multiculturalism, or for their incompatibility with other communities and their lifestyles according to the nationalist logic of ethnopluralism. It is the cooking habits, the language, the music habits, the religious practices, and the social codes of migrants, refugees, or Rom that are said to be incompatible with the national lifestyles of Europeans and to create unmanageable social tensions for which the only solution lies in separate living spaces for each community. Culture, seen as rooted in history and grown over centuries, is as good as biology to signify the “ objective, ” the virtually unchangeable and quasi-innate. 25 Cultural differences are made out to be as specific to each community, and as intolerable by virtue of being “ other ” to any other community, as are the differences between species in popular mythology: like “ cats and dogs, ” they cannot live together in peace (although we know that cats and dogs can).

  More importantly, the idea that apparently homogeneous national communities have a right to an exclusive territory, to exclusive living space in which to realize their national identity, has become the uncontested “ natural ” assumption of modernity. The reunification of Germany, as the apparently “ natural ” consequence of the GDR ’ s liberation from its communist dictatorship, has reaffirmed the national-ethnic principle — “ Germany to the Germans ” having become a slogan again which politicians frame into policy and national extremists murderously act out in the streets. Territorial conquests by Serbian forces in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina are accompanied not only by what is known as “ ethnic cleansing ” — that is, the murder and dispersion of non-Serbian (and oppositional Serbian) inhabitants — but by international “ peace talks ” honoring such conquest by proposals for the ethnic division of the Bosnian state (Vance-Owen plan). Ethnic self-definition and constitution are what the West chooses to see in the outbreak of war in the territories of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union after the collapse of the colonial Soviet empire, as it chooses to see in the strife in the territories of its own former colonies in the Third World.

  The establishment of the modern international order of nation-states, apparently superseding the European colonial world empires, has neither diminished nor dismantled the power of the leading European nations. Rather, it has been the unquestionable starting point, the power base from which a semblance of “ rights ” is eventually passed down the ladder to other “ nations. ” In particular, the methods that had built the modern European nation-states and former empires — war, territorial conquest, genocide, slavery, colonialism, militarism, the exploitation of humans, animals, and natural resources — have neither been ended nor even put into question; they are now simply being regulated by international conventions. Just as the extension of “ human ” rights to black people and women within national frameworks — their so-called emancipation — has not managed to shake the superior power of white men, so the “ emancipation ” of nations in the Third World or now in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union does not challenge or seriously put into question the superior power of the former imperialist and colonial empires.

  The architects of the international community of nations, like the directors of the zoo, have first of all secured their own vast and overabundant territories, their continued ruling power over other species or communities, their continued “ right ” of access to and exploitation of the territories and resources (including the inhabitants themselves) of other communities. Only once the European world powers were securely established and European political and economic hegemony unchallengeable, did they begin to carve up the rest of the land (and seas) into apparently similar nation-states and to grant so-called “ nation status ” to newly emerging nations, thus exporting and imposing the ideology of nationalism and internationalism on the “ rest ” of the world. Whether a prospective nation qualifies as a nation and is granted independence is still the decision of the directors of the international community of nations. The principle of self-determination to the contrary, a community can no more establish (or dissolve) borders without international consent than a group of animals could erect or tear down a fence in the zoo without the consent of the managers of the zoo. Thus Slovenia, Croatia, and later Bosnia-Hercegovina were granted recognition as independent nation-states, while Macedonia, for example, has been denied it. Many other aspirants to nation status, or “ national ethnicities, ” especially but not only in Europe, have been denied it. The Irish remain divided; the Basques are struggling in vain for independence;the Sami constitute minorities in a number of northern nation-states without a country called Samiland or Lapland.

  Where a human species is seriously threatened but the international community does not consider it in its interest to grant it independent nation status, the community establishes “ natural reserves ” or reservations and protection zones, as for instance in the case of the Kurdish people in Iraq after the war of 1991 or at present in parts of Bosnia. The notion has already acquired notoriety with the installation of Indian reservations in the United States. The cause of the threat — the will to war, destruction, and exploitation on the part of the aggressors — is left untouched and unchallenged: the “ international community
” simply extends protection where war and destruction have reached a degree that it finds excessive.

  Just as the directors of the zoo and their “ human race ” are not just another species among species with its designated space in the zoo, but command the entire natural space including the zoo, eat the meat of other animals, and live off the large-scale exploitation of animals and their habitats, so the directors of the internationalized globe preserve their right of access to and exploitation of the entire globe, and in particular their right to organize the zoo. Western capital and Western multinationals exploit the natural and human resources of the entire globe, while Western-dominated, “ international ” military forces secure their access to them (impressively demonstrated, for example, during the Gulf war of 1991). Similarly, members of Western nations are roaming every corner of the world as their rightful recreational living space, while the borders of their own countries are increasingly becoming sealed to people from outside the Western world. Through the successful exportation of the nationalist idea, including its principles of national power based on militarism and war, Western nations moreover have secured the vital support of the governments of other nations for the maintenance of the international order and for their own hegemony within it.

  The nationalist idea however, like the idea of the animal zoo and of national parks and reservations, was developed by intellectuals and statesmen of the leading European powers, at a time when the European conquest of the world ’ s territories and resources had reached its unprecedented peak with the colonial empires. These conquests and the accompanying practices of slavery, colonialism, and exploitation had imposed a reign of terror, a rule of violent domination and a scarcity of resources (or of access to them) on the vast majority of the people of the world, fostering indeed strife for survival also among nearest neighbors. But if neighboring communities (or their leaders) today do fight each other for resources and living space, the fact that they have to survive in conditions of poverty and scarcity and in the circumscribed territories of the political and economic order in the “ South ” and the “ East, ” is of European (Northern/Western) making — just as the circumscribed territory of a zoo and the restricted conditions of animals ’ habitats in the world are of human making.