Animal Liberation

While the case for veganism may be argued to be beyond debate, ending the exploitation of nonhuman animals remains hindered by the ubiquity of speciesism. This paper therefore explores the resilience of the speciesist order in two related contexts: the cultural reproduction of speciesism, including the ridicule of veganism; the applicability of Cohen’s sociological theory of denial to the exploitation of nonhuman animals. In so doing, the paper points towards intersections between speciesism and other forms of oppression, which may in turn help to inform effective vegan activism and prevent veganism from being marginalized as a “single issue."

This article argues that the use of sexual infiltration by police and criminal collaborators represents a strategic deployment of surveillance technology by the state with the aim of creating Foucault’s “docile bodies” through the development of totalising omnipresence. The insertion of police into the private sphere of activists’ sexual relationships – a site presumed to be outside of state gaze – serves to not only disrupt the target communities but also to reverberate throughout social networks and create inactivity. By exposing informants from within one’s own “family”, the state is able to collect intelligence, spread insecurity and display totalising disciplinary power to the social movement under observation.

To all nature and cosmos that still suffer fundamentally from our cruel existence
To all those who have lost or sacrificed their lives and properties against the States, tyranny, and for ecology
To all powerless people whose suffering unfortunately makes State luxury and violence possible 

We can regard this incomplete bibliography as a slowly individual and social awareness of the suffering as well as happiness of putting into question and revolting against the cruelties of human beings toward themselves, non-humans, and nature as well. This has happened during a long process of deep reflection, discontentment, war (e.g., the Syrian Civil War), occupation, imperialism, colonization, revolt (e.g., Occupy Gezi, Nuit Debout, and the 2017-2019 Iranian Revolt against Shiite Daesh or the Islamic Republic of Iran, and les Gilets Jaunes), and revolution. We have thus started to see and feel, throughout our blood and flesh, the extreme, harmful, shameful, and degrading pains and consequences of ignorance, homelessness, slum, poverty, inequality, religiosity, authority, hierarchy, tyranny, repression, exploitation, starvation, deportation, mass immigration and refugee, war, genocide, massacre, execution, mutilation, stoning, whipping, torture, rape, imprisonment, plunder (e.g., taxation or organized and systematic State robbery), sexism, discrimination, white supremacy, slavery, corruption (e.g., State democracy and State art), brainwashing, propaganda, as well as the enslavement, abuse, pollution, and destruction of animals and nature over our existences and non-human existences as well. The catastrophic situation of countless women (prostitutes and domestic slaves, among others), children (e.g., street children and child labour including child prostitution), individuals with disabilities, and seniors is also indignant and revolting.
We face some fundamental questions in that awareness. For instance, why and how we, as the so-called masters of earth or masterpiece of, à l’image de l’homme, an extremely fictive (man-made), irrational, shitty, cruel, bloodthirsty, narcissist, sadist, sexist, anti-animalist, and capitalist animal called and worshiped as God, continue to massacre, punish, enslave, and exploit ourselves and all fauna and flora in the name of God, rationality, prosperity, progress, civilization, democracy, justice, or natural law? How can we, the dirtiest and wildest animals in a world founded on endlessly systematic injustice, lies, cruelties and pains, live freely, harmoniously, peacefully, and fairly with ourselves, each other, animals, and ecology? Could the following and very diverse and controversial works, experiences, movements (especially those connected to so-called “anarcho-capitalism”, “religious anarchism”, and “national anarchism”), and think-tankers – principally certain academic Godfathers/mothers (usually a bunch of secondhand or used Professors sacralizing and worshiping a fossilized or dead Godlike Anarchist, and exclusively by whom they have enthusiastically discovered their existential meaning of liberty and justice or their anarchist salvation) who are mostly coming from a Judeo-Christian stock, rooted in a colonial/postcolonial mentality, in the United States and Europe – provide us with certain solutions for and alternatives to our extremely indoctrinated, racialized, sexualized, unequalized, centralized, regulated, criminalized, nationalized, and militarized societies in which we have become so brute and ignorant under the yoke of egoism, religionism, Statism, despotism, militarism, and all other “isms” like Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Guevarism, Maoism, capitalism, and liberalism? As long as the libertarian think-tankers and anarchist Godfathers/mothers with their gangs and acolytes continue to regard themselves as “regalian, sacred, or vanguard intellectuals” and to exist with their “opportunist, capitalist, privileged, whitish, or racist class and gang” (i.e. champagne socialist or anarchist hypocrisy, perfectly mingled with anarchist segregation), hotly worshiped by their ass-kissers and the mass media, there will be no hope for any deep change or revolution with any alive or dead anarchist. As for us, i.e. the ordinary people, the fight for liberty, justice, equality, peace, and ecology has just started; our silence is nothing but a crime against humanity as well as naturality causing and strengthening State luxury and violence.

Vive la Dignité Existentielle jusqu’à la Mort de la Dernière Tyrannie de l’Humanité!

Un saggio di Peter Staudenmaier, «L’ambiguità dei diritti animali», ha riproposto il tema della critica “da sinistra” all’antispecismo. Periodicamente, infatti, parte della sinistra – compresa quella anticapitalista – mostra una certa insofferenza nei confronti della crescita delle lotte contro la schiavitù degli altri animali. Il saggio di Staudenmaier, la cui traduzione italiana è stata significativamente pubblicata da Federfauna, è in questo senso paradigmatico: giustappone e mescola contro-obiezioni infondate, argomenti diretti contro atteggiamenti erroneamente attribuiti all’animalismo nella sua totalità e critiche potenzialmente costruttive. Inoltre, la cornice teorica di riferimento, quella dell’ecologia sociale, è un approccio che si potrebbe definire sistemico, potenzialmente non antropocentrico e soprattutto molto attento a non concedere nulla alle derive misticheggianti e reazionarie della deep ecology. Scopo del presente lavoro è quello di decostruire le accuse mosse da Staudenmaier al pensiero e alla prassi antispeciste, facendo al contempo emergere alcuni elementi critici del movimento antispecista che mostrano i rischi di derive autoritarie.

This paper explores the relationship between social movement protest, economic sabotage, state capitalism, the “Green Scare,” and public forms of political repression. Through a quantitative analysis of direct action activism highlighting the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, the discourse surrounding mechanisms of social change and their impact on state power and capitalist accumulation will be examined. The analyses examines the earth and animal liberation movements, utilizing a Marxist-anarchist lens to illustrate how these non-state actors provide powerful critiques of capital and the state. Specifically, the discussion examines how state-sanctioned violence against these movements represents a return to Foucauldian Monarchical power. A quantitative-qualitative history will be used to argue that the movements’ actions fail to qualify as “terrorism,” and to examine the performance of power between the radical left and the state. State repression demonstrates not only the capitalist allegiances between government and industry, but also a sense of capital’s desperation hoping to counter a movement that has produced demonstrable victories by the means of bankrupting and isolating corporations. The government is taking such unconstitutional measures as a “talk back” between the revolutionary potential of these movements’ ideology as well as the challenge they present to state capitalism.

Il contributo si propone di indagare il rapporto fra soggettivazione maschile
e diffusione del veganismo/vegetarismo. Il rifiuto di cibarsi di corpi
animali ha, infatti, un particolare impatto sia sulla percezione pubblica
dei modelli di maschilità, sia su quella individuale del proprio corpo,
della propria sessualità e del proprio posizionamento in termini di genere
e orientamento sessuale.
In particolare, è centrale la relazione fra consumo di carne e maschilità
“tradizionale”: la dieta carnea può essere considerata come un dispositivo
di riproduzione della norma eterosessuale e, contemporaneamente,
della norma sacrificale. Il gesto di non cibarsi di carne – un gesto ricco di
conseguenze sul corpo e nelle relazioni interpersonali – è dunque oggetto
di uno stigma che, nel caso del veganismo maschile, assume connotazioni
omofobiche e misogine. Le strategie discorsive utilizzate dai maschi
vegan per rispondere alla marginalizzazione, come rilevato da Simonsen,
tendono perlopiù a rafforzare l’eterocentrismo, con l’intento di rassicurare
l’interlocutore sulla conciliabilità del veganismo con i valori dominanti,
a partire dall’eterosessualità obbligatoria e dai ruoli maschili “tradizionali”.
La tesi proposta è che tale intreccio di vegefobia e omofobia sia
riconducibile alla potenzialità di destabilizzazione della maschilità egemone
che il veganismo possiede in quanto tecnologia del sé capace mettere
in discussione contemporaneamente due privilegi, quello di specie e quello di genere, e che l’adesione maschile a una norma sacrificale che
sancisce il privilegio umano di mangiare senza essere mangiati sia collegata
alla norma eterosessuale in quanto dispositivo che attribuisce al
maschio il privilegio di agire la penetrazione senza subirla. Viene abbozzata
una lettura parallela di testi provenienti da due ambiti di pensiero
tradizionalmente distanti, l’ecofemminismo (Plumwood) e la critica
queer antisociale (Bersani), al fine articolare in modo più puntuale alcuni
aspetti del legame fra norma eterosessuale e norma sacrificale.

"Vegan Entanglements" invites sixteen activists, scholars, and journalists to grapple with some of the most topical issues facing the animal protection movement.

In the chapter "Abolitionary Advocacy: Expanding Empathy Toward Total Liberation," nico draws on conversations from within jail to critique the animal protection movement's historical framing and focus, and outlines a more just and strategic path forward. Central to this path is a shift from targeting individuals to systems, and a move to include the human victims of Big Meat in our advocacy—slaughterhouse and factory farm workers in particular. The success of the animal protection movement depends, in part, upon this growth.

The Earth Liberation Front is a radical environmental movement that developed from the ideological factionalization of the British Earth First! movement of the 1990s. Its ideological underpinnings are based in deep ecology, anti-authoritarian leftism highlighting its critique of capitalism, a commitment to non-violence, a collective defense of the Earth, and a warranted feeling of persecution by State forces. In its current form, the Earth Liberation Front is a transnational, decentralized network of clandestine, autonomous, cells that utilize illegal methods of protest by sabotaging and vandalizing property. The small unit cells are self-contained entities that can operate without the support of external entities such as financiers or weapons procurers. Tactical and operational knowledge is developed and shared through commercially available books written by the broader environmental movement throughout the last four decades, as well as inter-movement publications produced by the cells and distributed through numerous sympathetic websites. Membership in the Front can be understood as occurring on two levels, the covert cell level and the public support level, both of which operate in tandem to produce and publicize acts of property destruction. At the cell level, individuals conduct pre-operational reconnaissance and surveillance, develop and construct weapons systems, carry out orchestrated attacks, and announce their actions to support groups and media while maintaining internal security and anonymity. At the aboveground level, support entities help to publicize attacks carried out by cells, respond to media inquiries and other public engagements, identify and coordinate aid to imprisoned cell members, and develop and distribute sympathetic propaganda produced by, and in support of affiliated individuals. This case study uses the history of the Earth Liberation Front‟s United States attacks as its unit of analysis, and seeks to outline the ideology, structure, context and membership factors that constitute the movement.

The neo-insurrectionist network known as Bash Back! has contributed to the queering of the animal liberation discourse through the publication of their 2010 communiqué entitled, “Bash Back!ers in Support of Autonomous Animal Action Call For Trans-Species Solidarity With Tillikum.” The politic developed by the larger movement of neo-insurrectionist Queers, as exemplified by Bash Back!, has served to disrupt anthropocentric notions of human-liberator, animal-captive that form the centerpiece of the animal liberation discourse. Through their appropriation of an attack wherein an orca whale killed its trainer at SeaWorld, Bash Back! problematizes not only the normalized domestication of non-human animals for entertainment, but also the discourse used to critique such enslavement. Through satirical posturing and a liberatory framework, Bash Back! attempts to draw intersectional connection between the systems of domination that enslave both non-human animals and non-heterosexual Queers. Through a queering of this understanding of liberation, Bash Back! serves to shift the animal liberation discourse away from the human centric “total liberation” framework, and towards an anti-speciest framework proposed herein, termed “total solidarity.”

Comparing the motivations and effects of the earth and animal liberation movements to the impetus and impact of definitively violent industries, the ‘terrorist’ label is shown to be a misnomer for activists; rather, it is the deflecting denial-mechanism of inherently violent and destructive entities.

Beginning in the late 1990s, the United States federal government (or, the “State”) initiated a counter-terrorism campaign directed at an emerging network of domestic environmental, and animal rights, direct action activists targeting property (e.g. vandalism, sabotage, theft and arson) under the monikers of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.  With measured pace, federally managed law enforcement agencies identified a “threat” which they perceived was growing.  The State then accelerated its observation, gathered information on the environmental and animal rights movements, and began to allocate local and national resources to address the movements’ surges. 

Ironically, the FBI acknowledged in 2005 that the number of incidents of property damage was actually decreasing, although it attributed the drop to its Operation Backfire convictions.  Nonetheless, the perceived threat of environmental and animal rights-themed property destruction was framed politically as a primary domestic threat deserving of national attention.  However, the federalized investigations of these incidents represent a divergence in traditional jurisdictional limitations of US law enforcement.  Even court records imply that the National Security Agency (NSA), typically employed for outside military operations, might have been used to conduct wiretapping domestically on these activists.

Upon deciding to engage with these movements, the US government developed laws and organizational structures for the intelligence and law enforcement community to use in their efforts to prosecute, uncover, and disrupt them.  This is not dissimilar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) counter-intelligence operations (“COINTELPRO”) of the 1960s and 1970s.  However, more pervasive than COINTELPRO, the counter-terrorism strategy, taken as a whole, has been able to incorporate all three branches of government.  The State was able to coalesce its abilities through multi-departmental taskforces built on agencies’ specialized skill sets, and through information sharing and international cooperation.  The FBI was able to make arrests and to use defendants’ testimonies, leading to indictments, arrests, and convictions.

Veganism, an ethical stance rejecting human use of nonhuman animals, challenges the profit-securing speciesism of capitalist societies. As veganism becomes more culturally visible, mainstream media, the mass-communicative arm of corporate power and the state apparatuses supporting it, sporadically invoke veganism in ways that reaffirm speciesist ideology and (re)position “meat”-eating as normative. This paper applies qualitative critical discourse analysis to articles mentioning veganism in major U.S. news outlets from October 2017 through March 2018. Among few positive attributions (e.g., favorable reviews of vegan food), virtually all misrepresented veganism as a (fanatical or faddish) diet, cited “meat”-industry representatives, or used veganism to stand-in for oversensitivity, eccentricity, or other personal traits deemed undesirable. Most crucially, the ethical foundations of veganism went generally unmentioned, perpetuating public misunderstanding and denial of veganism’s challenge to animal exploitation. This points to the double-edged nature of the recent mainstreaming of dietary veganism: on the one hand, the growing availability of vegan food provides people with necessary alternatives to nonhuman-animal-based diets; yet this culinary development has not ushered in accurate or sympathetic representation of the views, motivations, or experiences of ethical vegans.

Veganism is on the rise. Among the many modern cultural trends, it is one of the most popular and fastest growing movements. It comes off as appealing not only to secular persons but also to religious ones including many Christians. Veganism is defined as a philosophy and lifestyle that completely refrains from the use of any animal product. Ethical veganism is more than just abstaining from meat due to health concerns or environmental issues. It claims a higher morality of how humans should treat animals. A brief look at the history of ethical veganism exposes two of its origins: Eastern religions and atheistic or agnostic naturalism; these two are not mutually exclusive since their presuppositions and arguments are very much alike. Even within Christianity, there are some who argue that the Bible supports ethical veganism. Some evangelicals however call for a more balanced view of human-animal relations and offer a push back to the expanding movement. Ethical veganism as a worldly philosophy assaults and distorts sound biblical teachings on the distinction between man and animals, on man's proper stewardship of animals, on true care and compassion for animals, and on the liberation of both animals and man. Ethical veganism is incompatible with the biblical worldview and Christian living. While the challenge of contemporary veganism to Christian liberty, conscience, and action must be answered, Christians cannot be ethical vegans in its truest form.

L’intreccio fra liberazione animale e liberazione umana è dibattuto ormai da anni e a diversi livelli, a partire dalle (eventuali) implicazioni fra le due lotte e dai rapporti fra specifici soggetti che si mobilitano nei rispettivi ambiti. La distinzione fra liberazione animale e liberazione umana viene
ovviamente messa in gioco in ogni discussione su questo tema. È tuttavia altrettanto evidente che la dicotomia umano/non umano e quella fra lotte “umane” e liberazione animale siano quantomeno percepite come reali e soprattutto che vengano agite come se avessimo a che fare con istanze separate.
Per questo, il modo in cui i rapporti fra questi due poli vengono concepiti, modulati – o, al limite, negati – costituisce un problema importante. L'articolo non affronta tale problema, però, dal punto di vista dei nessi generali o di quelli specifici
fra liberazione animale e umana. Scopo del presente lavoro è quello di cercare di comprendere alcune delle espressioni dell’animalismo “di destra”, o meglio di dare conto delle posture conservatrici, autoritarie o anti-egualitariste che si accompagnano alla mobilitazione in favore degli sfruttat* di altre specie, provando a descrivere, al di là di una mappatura puntuale dell’animalismo di destra, le tipologie di discorsi che rientrano in questa galassia e che esercitano una certa influenza anche al di fuori di essa. A partire da queste realtà,
in cui la presa di parola per gli animali si accompagna di fatto a una presa di parola contro alcuni umani marginalizzati, si cerca di far emergere le modalità comunicative, le retoriche e le pratiche che rischiano di permeare anche quell’attivismo antispecista che, per altri versi, è consapevolmente
contrario alle discriminazioni intraumane, se non addirittura esplicitamente anticapitalista.

This essay will ethnographically explore some social, material and visual dimensions of contemporary art praxis, focusing on its conjuncture with ‘the animal question’ and other animals’ bodies1. It will demonstrate that an anthropological approach to art, as defined by Gell (1998; 1999), is invaluable in beginning to trace some of the multilayered ethnographic pathways that constitute the ‘art-objects’ and/or ‘art-events’ that are at the centre of today’s complex ‘art-world’ scenes. In exploring these issues it will address such questions as: what is the place of nonhuman animals in contemporary art? Does the presence of the animal body in contemporary art imply the address of ‘the animal question’? Is it socially acceptable to inflict pain or cause the death of other animals ‘for the sake of art’? Throughout this paper it will be demonstrated and argued that using Gell’s idea of the art “nexus” (1998: 12 et al.) for ethnographic research is invaluable to engage critically with the at times obscure, murky and dazzling worlds of the ‘postmodern’ art scenes. It will also, towards the end of the text, and perhaps as a playful alternative to Vogel’s net and Gell’s traps as artworks, present the work
of Angela Singer as what art might look like if it were produced by (some) anthropologists.

'[...] I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.

'It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, “Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.” And then I go to the bathroom and the soap wrapper says, “Treblinka – 100% human stearate.” Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?

‘Yet I’m not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into Norma’s, into the children’s, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?’

Elisabeth Costello (Coetzee 2001: 69)

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has carried out acts of political violence and ‘economic sabotage’ characterized  by a pattern of behaviour reflecting tactical and targeting selections, communications strategies, and geographic  location. The movement’s attacks typically focus on the destruction of property located in ‘soft targets’ associated  with commercial and residential construction, the automotive industry, and a variety of local, national and  multinational business interests. These sites are routinely targeted through a variety of means ranging from  graffiti to sabotage to arson. Geographically, the movement has focused its attacks in the United States and  Mexico, and, to a limited extent, countries on the European, South American and Australian continents. The  findings presented in this article were developed through a statistical analysis of the movement’s attack history  as presented through its above-ground support network. This is discussed in critical contrast to assertions about  the movement’s alleged terrorist behaviour found in most academic and government literature. This study seeks  to present an incident-based historical analysis of the ELF that is not situated within a logic of securitisation. In  doing so, it challenges traditional scholarship based on statistical findings.

Since 1979, the Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts have claimed thousands of attacks worldwide targeting property. While these protest movements have been relatively impervious to infiltration, disruption and arrest, the US and UK governments have made investigation and prosecution of these groups a number one priority. Since the mid 2000s, with the disclose of the State’s targeted surveillance and criminalization of these movements, activists quickly labeled the prevailing political environment the “Green Scare”—drawing linkages to the surveillance and prosecution of leftist activists in the century prior. The Green Scare, as diagramed within a matrix of juridical, legalistic and political mechanisms has criminalized forms of political dissent—providing a disincentive for activists’ oppositional political engagement. The current study’s analysis applies an emergent method of conflict analysis and mediation to the subject of the violent non-State actor. In this manner it attempts to adapt this conflict mediation approach to examine how counter-terrorism exists as an articulation of the State’s epistemological framework and lived experience of State-personhood. Though examining the State as an entity capable of synthesizing experiences and generating a perceived “threat”, one can examine a resulting juridical “defense”. Utilizing the Insight approach to conflict mediation as developed by scholars including Bernard Lonergan (1992; 1998; 2004), Robert Fitterer (2008), Cheryl Picard (2010; 2011) and Jamie Price (2012), one can understand the State’s threat perception, narrative construction, and finally, policies that emanate from such a conflict understanding. The analysis contained herein attempts to adopt the Insight approach in order to undertake a critical, interpretive analysis of the Green Scare. The aim here is to extend Insight’s application to an analysis of Statecraft and by doing so, offer a challenging case study for consideration.

This article explores whether or not animal activists who engage in violence might legitimately be labelled “terrorists.” To this end, I examine common assumptions concerning the use of pre-emptive counter-violence in order to defend the comparatively defenceless. Through the use of casuistry, this essay compares specific hypothetical instances of killing comparatively defenceless individuals, beginning with scenarios that offer a clear general consensus, moving to more controversial cases. This indicates that contemporary violence on behalf of animal liberation, often assumed to be rash and radical, is actually quite restrained. The intent of this paper is not to make claims as to how liberationists ought to behave, but rather to highlight egregious inconsistencies in our attitudes toward violence on behalf of those who are comparatively defenceless.

Despite a renewed fascination with the concept ‘animal’ in academia, and even rigorous critique of our relationship to and with nonhuman animals, dominant mainstream ideologies and practices continue to produce and reproduce hierarchical relations with inherent and normalized violence. Certain mediums such as film, however, have the capacity to disrupt our thinking so that the primacy of human subjectivity becomes questioned more or less intuitively. Films such as Benji the Hunted (1987), Free Willy (1993), The Whale Rider (2002) and the two Planet of the Apes movies (2014; 2017) are good examples of this, although the animal subjectivities often remain narrated from a humanist perspective. The 2015 Hungarian film, White God, moves beyond such an anthropomorphized representation (at least as much as this is possible), and narrates the story of a mixed-breed dog, called Hagen, in such a way that the human and animal subjectivities are ontologically equiponderated. Focusing on the underdog-superhero configurations in the film, and further grounding her argument in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of “becoming-animal”, Chantelle Gray van Heerden argues for a deeper understanding through which to reconceptualize negotiated and non-negotiated processes of human and nonhuman subjectivities. To do so, she considers the possibilities offered by ahuman theory to account for the surplus power enjoyed and wielded by humans. Finally, she looks at how we might begin to prefigure our conceptions and subjectivities around nature and ecology in such a way that they are grounded in ontological equality and function within a relational epistemology, as is illustrated so beautifully through the underdog-superhero canine uprising in White God when Hagen, abandoned by his guardian, has to learn to fend for himself and, in time, attracts some 250 cross-breeds who start an underdog revolt in Budapest.

The focus of attention here will be animal rescue of a sort which is regarded as illegal because it involves trespass and/or theft of property (the animals themselves). Rescue of this sort can be either open or covert: 'open rescue' is associated with organisations such as Animal Liberation Victoria and Animal Liberation New South Wales; 'covert rescue' is associated with the Animal Liberation Front. While the former seems to qualify non-controversially as civil disobedience I argue that at least some instances of the latter may also qualify just so long as various norms of civility (e.g. norms concerning recognition of others, the avoidance of violence and threats) are satisfied. This does, however, involve rejecting the Rawlsian thesis that civil disobedience is a form of communication. What it need not lead us to reassess is the political potential of these forms of protest. Because of its openness (among other reasons) open rescue carries far greater long-term potential. Covert rescue is just what it seems to be, the saving of the lives of particular fellow creatures.

The present essay is the first part of an investigation programme regarding animal ethics. In this analysis, I first introduce the – in my view – central questions concerning animal ethics, that is, whether at least some kinds of animals have a moral status – so that at least some kinds of animals have determined rights –, or whether no kind of animal has a moral status – so that no animals have any rights whatsoever. Connected to these questions is the problem whether men have, or do not have duties towards animals. I then present the main ideas of Tom Regan and of Peter Singer on animal ethics: Both thinkers express the opinion that at least some kinds of animals do have a moral status: therefore, on no account may men use these kinds of animals. I finally describe some positions of Peter Carruthers as one of the strongest opponents of the view that animals may have a moral status.
The uploaded text is the PDF of my word version. The published text can be found at the address https://cis01.central.ucv.ro/analele_universitatii/filosofie/2018/Anale41_1.pdf

Full text available at:
https://www.academia.edu/1449289/_2012_Operation_Splash_Back_Queering_Animal_Liberation_Through_the_Contributions_of_Neo-Insurrectionist_Queers
-------------------------------------------------
The neo-insurrectionist network known as Bash Back! has contributed to the queering of the animal liberation discourse through the publication of their 2010 communiqué entitled, “Bash Back!ers in Support of Autonomous Animal Action Call For Trans-Species Solidarity With Tillikum.” The politic developed by the larger movement of neo-insurrectionist Queers, as exemplified by Bash Back!, has served to disrupt anthropocentric notions of human-liberator, animal-captive that form the centerpiece of the animal liberation discourse. Through their appropriation of an attack wherein an orca whale killed its trainer at SeaWorld, Bash Back! problematizes not only the normalized domestication of non-human animals for entertainment, but also the discourse used to critique such enslavement. Through satirical posturing and a liberatory framework, Bash Back! attempts to draw intersectional connection between the systems of domination that enslave both non-human animals and nonheterosexual Queers. Through a queering of this understanding of liberation, Bash Back! serves to shift the animal liberation discourse away from the human centric “total liberation” framework, and towards an anti-speciest framework proposed herein, termed “total solidarity.”

A rede neo-insurrecionária conhecida como Bash Back! contribuiu para a queerização do discurso sobre a libertação animal através da publicação do comunicado de 2010 intitulado “Bash Back!ers, em apoio à autonomia da ação animal, clamam pela solidariedade trans-espécie em relação a Tilikum.” [Bash Back!ers In Support of Autonomous Animal Action Call for Trans-Species Solidarity With Tilikum] A política desenvolvida pela maioria dos movimentos neo-insurrecionários Queers, como exemplificado pela Bash Back!, serve para romper com as noções antropocêntricas concernentes ao humano-libertador e ao animal-cativo que constituem  a peça central do discurso relativo à libertação animal. Através da apropriação de um ataque em que uma baleia orca matou sua treinadora no SeaWorld, a Bash Back! problematiza não somente a domesticação normalizada de animais não-humanos para o entretenimento, mas também o discurso utilizado para criticar tal escravização. Por meio de uma postura satírica e um quadro libertário, Bash Back! visa desenhar uma conexão interseccional entre os sistemas de dominação que escravizam tanto animais não-humanos quanto não-heterossexuais Queers. A partir da queerização deste entendimento concernente à libertação, Bash Back! busca modificar o caminho do discurso relativo à libertação animal no que tange ao quadro humano centralizador atinente à “libertação total” para um quadro antiespecista proposto, doravante, por meio da “solidariedade total”.

Palavras-chave: Bash Back!, insurrecionismo, anarquismo, orca, SeaWorld, interseccionalidade.

--------------------------------------------

La red neo-insurreccional conocida como Bash Back! ha contribuido a la queerización del discurso sobre la liberación animal a través de la publicación del comunicado de 2010, titulado "Bash Back! en apoyo de la autonomía de acción animal, llamado a la solidaridad transespecie con Tilikum." [Bash Back!ers In Support of Autonomous Animal Action Call for Trans-Species Solidarity With Tilikum] la política desarrollada por la mayoría de los movimientos neo-insurreccionales Queers, como se ejemplifica en Bash Back!, es romper con las nociones antropocéntricas humano-liberador y animal-cautivo, que constituyen  la pieza central del discurso sobre la liberación animal. A través de la apropiación de un ataque en el que una ballena orca mató a su entrenadora en SeaWorld, Bash Back!discute no sólo la domesticación normalizadade los animales no humanos para el entretenimiento, sino también el discurso para criticar tal esclavización. A través de una postura satírica y un cuadro libertario, Bash Back! intenta establecer una conexión interseccional entre los sistemas de dominación que esclavizan tanto como a animales no humanos como a no-heterosexuales Queers. A partir de la quuerización de este sentido acerca de la liberación, Bash Back! busca modificar la ruta del discurso relativo a la liberación animal en lo que atañe a la estructura humana centralizadora referida a la "liberación total" para un marco antiespecista propuesto, de ahora en adelante, por medio de la "solidaridad total"

Palabras-clave: Bash Back!, insurrecionismo, anarquismo, orca, SeaWorld, interseccionalidad

--------------------------------------------

The neo-insurrectionist network known as Bash Back! has contributed to the queering of the animal liberation discourse through the publication of their 2010 communiqué entitled, “BashBack!ers in Support of Autonomous Animal Action Call For Trans-Species Solidarity With Tillikum.” The politic developed by the larger movement of neo-insurrectionist Queers, as exemplified by Bash Back!, has served to disrupt anthropocentric notions of human-liberator, animal-captive that form the centerpiece of the animal liberation discourse. Through their appropriation of an attack wherein an orca whale killed its trainer at SeaWorld, Bash Back! problematizes not only the normalized domestication of non-human animals for entertainment, but also the discourse used to critique such enslavement. Through satirical posturing and a liberatory framework, Bash Back! attempts to draw intersectional connection between the systems of domination that enslave both non-human animals and non-heterosexual Queers. Through a queering of this understanding of liberation, Bash Back! serves to shift the animal liberation discourse away from the human centric “total liberation” framework, and towards an anti-speciest framework proposed herein, termed “total solidarity.”

Keywords: Bash Back!, insurrectionist, anarchism, orca, SeaWorld, intersectionality.

In this paper I explore the relations between contemporary anarchism and animal rights/liberation through the lens of Deleuze/Guattari-inflected complex systems theory. Specifically, I look at the liberalism and normative practices endemic to the mainstream animal rights movement, engaging with some of the more salient critiques that have emerged from Leftist and radical (anti-)political milieus and exploring the ways in which the theory and practice of anarchism – including its post- and nihilist strains – suggests an alternative, possibly more effective way of conceiving of animal liberation.

(Forthcoming, 2015 in currently untitled edited volume on anarchism and animal liberation.)