Speciesism, Identity Politics, and Ecocriticism: A Conversation with Humanists and Posthumanists

Abstract

A electronic conversation aimed at confronting "speciesism," and constructing what Cary Wolfe calls a "posthumanist theory of the subject."

Who's a good boy then? Anthropocentric masculinities in veterinary practice

“…Consequently, we argue that it is possible to oppose individualism and demands for autonomy without abandoning or dismissing all humanistic values, such as respect for life and community. In problematizing relations of human domination, we have sympathy with Cole et al's () observation that ‘Wolfe sees inevitable and unbreakable links between the speciesist relegation of animals to the realm of inferior other, and the human repression of other humans’ (p. 94). We cannot but agree that the treatment of animals as inferior readily spills over to fellow [ sic ] humans, and it is what we are referring to as masculine anthropocentricities, where a lack of care or outright discrimination is projected on any difference that fails to confirm the dominant position.…”

“…As with so many post dawn awakenings, post‐humanism has a diversity of different meanings, from rejecting the idea that humans are at the centre of the universe, to the belief that human reason depends on an escape from our animal origins to some cybernetic transcendence of our very embodiment (Hayles, ). The latter is the displacement of cognition as we become a ‘body without organs’ (Deleuze & Guattari, , p. 149), while the former is a perspective that ‘returns us to our messy, material, and embodied contingency — including (but not limited to) our evolutionary inheritance and symbiotic entanglements as animals , as fellow creatures’ (Wolfe in Cole et al, , p. 102). While post‐humanism can be divided into factions, a common denominator is a belief that it is a successor to, and transcendence of, the dogma of human pre‐eminence, anthropocentricism and speciesism.…”

“…An alternative position is to argue that post‐humanism ‘comes before and after humanism’ — before in the sense that it ‘names the embodiment and embeddedness of the human being’, and after in the sense of opposing ‘the fantasies of disembodiment and autonomy, inherited from humanism’ (Wolfe, , p. xv). While animal studies confront ‘the anthropocentricism of liberal humanism (Fudge in Cole et al, , p. 94), post‐humanism goes much further in the criticism of human autonomy, rationality and teleology as well as the anthropocentric presumption that humans have sovereign rights over all they survey, and should always be ‘ the first one served ’ (De Fontenay, , p. 52; Wolfe, ). Post‐humanism also questions the anthropocentric and humanistic masculinities that through disembodied autonomy profess care, while controlling the marked ‘other’ — animals, children, women, minorities, nature and the body.…”

The fly that tried to save the world: Saproxylic geographies and other‐than‐human ecologies

“… See, for example, Cary Wolfe's contribution to the exchange in Cole et al. () along with more recent interventions from Deutscher () and Richter (). …”

Introduction

“… Erica Fudge is quite good on this point in the recent forum on speciesism, identity politics, and ecocriticism. See her contribution in Cole et al . …”