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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Not Another Plant-Based Documentary: A Critical Review Of Eating Our Way To Extinction, Melissa Plisic
Not Another Plant-Based Documentary: A Critical Review Of Eating Our Way To Extinction, Melissa Plisic
Animal Studies Journal
Despite mounting evidence that industrial animal agriculture is a formidable force of climate change and mass extinction, many humans remain impervious to this knowledge. Eating Our Way to Extinction is a timely documentary that takes this issue head on. This film review is guided by Alexandra Juhasz’s explanation of media praxis as ‘an enduring, mutual, and building tradition that theorizes and creates the necessary conditions for media to play an integral role in cultural and individual transformation’ (299). Eating Our Way to Extinction attends to some of the most popular strawman arguments against veganism and is widely accessible. That being …
Learning Hope In The Anthropocene: The Party For The Animals And Hope As A Political Practice, Eva Meijer
Learning Hope In The Anthropocene: The Party For The Animals And Hope As A Political Practice, Eva Meijer
Animal Studies Journal
This article investigates the role of hope in politics, in the context of the current climate crisis. Hoping for positive transformation may seem naïve and or a way to avoid action, but there is a close connection between hope and democratic action. Understood as a collective political practice, hope can contribute to imagining and articulating alternative futures, and motivate action. The first part of the paper explicates the relevance of the work of Ernst Bloch for the challenges of the Anthropocene. It focuses specifically on learning hope as a collective political practice, the function of utopias in fostering political imagination, …
Multispecies Disposability: Taxonomies Of Power In A Global Pandemic, Darren Chang, Lauren Corman
Multispecies Disposability: Taxonomies Of Power In A Global Pandemic, Darren Chang, Lauren Corman
Animal Studies Journal
This paper bridges critical conversations regarding animal exploitation and racialized violence that have been occurring throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We apply Claire Jean Kim’s analysis of taxonomies of power to help make sense of the interwoven multispecies catastrophes of racialized animalization and animalized racialization, such as the violence experienced by various species of nonhuman animals, as well as East Asians and other People of Colour in the West, whether in public spaces, in media, on farms, or inside industrial animal slaughterhouses or meatpacking plants. We conclude by arguing that Kim’s ethics of mutual avowal provides a productive way for social …
On The Origins Of The Anthropological Machine: Sacrificial Dispositif And Equality, Chiara Stefanoni
On The Origins Of The Anthropological Machine: Sacrificial Dispositif And Equality, Chiara Stefanoni
Animal Studies Journal
This article takes a genealogical approach to the material origin of what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called the ‘anthropological machine’, analyzing the dispositif by which the ontological and axiological dualism between the ‘human’ and the ‘animal’ first took place in archaic societies. Using some key concepts of René Girard’s anthropology, it is possible to argue that this dualism is rooted in the violent practice of victimage sacrifice. In other words, I claim that the anthropological machine is originally performed by a sacrificial dispositif. Though in modern society the human/animal dichotomy is performed by other dispositifs, the trace of …
From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné
From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné
Animal Studies Journal
Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a …