Kim Stallwood

Writing this on September 11, I cannot but help think of it as a sad day. Not only for everyone who was affected by the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, but also for the people in South America, when a military coup in Chile in 1973, deposed the democratically elected government. As difficult as it can be, life marches on relentlessly. We have to keep up and with its consequences. There is no option available here.

Toro de la Vega, where a bull is killed by a mob with spears

Even today, as I worked from home this morning, I followed the live developments of the Toro de la Vega in Tordesillas, which is in the province of Valladolid in central northern Spain.

The Toro de la Vega consisted of killing Volante, a five-year-old bull weighing 622 kilos, by spearing him to death with lances. The Toro is known in Spanish culture as a ‘tournament.’ But it’s impossible for me to think of it as that. It is violence toward animals.

Terrorism, regardless of the victim’s species, has no place in the world, if we want to think of ourselves as civilised.

Being in the fortunate position of working full-time for animal rights as long as I have, all too often every day is a sad day. Of course, I know I am not alone in feeling this. It’s true for everyone whose hearts and minds are open to animal cruelty and exploitation. Somehow, we cope with all the sadness, which is often softened by the joy we experience sharing our lives and homes with other animals. I like to think of these rescued animals as refugees. Citizens who are lost in a profound way who we must take in. Even if it means frequent cleaning of the litter box and walks when we’d rather have an early night.

Shelly, tucked in and asleep

Speaking of which, Shelly continues to settle in well. Her time spent in my office working with me is increasing. But she gets easily bored there, as my attention is focused on my work. Even though she can sleep for as long as she likes. And there’s always someone around who is happy to make a fuss of her. So, now, I spend some days, like today, working at home on the dining room table.

Now that we’re in September I have begun to focus more on planning my trip to the USA for the month of November. My itinerary includes New York, Washington, DC, and Ann Arbor, MI. I will be working closely with my colleagues, Ken Shapiro and Bee Friedlander, at the Animals and Society Institute. Also, I will be speaking at a conference at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT celebrating the life and work of ecofeminist philosopher Marti Kheel. In Troy, MI, I will be speaking as part of the ASI/Michigan Humane Society Speaker Series on ‘What Does It Mean to Care Deeply About Animals?’ The next day I’m also speaking at the Michigan Partnership for Animal Welfare on ‘USA/UK: Who is Making Progress and Why.’

Last week, I gave a paper, ‘Animal Rights: Moral Crusade or Social Movement?’, at the Universsity of Manchester which hosts MANCEPT, the annual forum in political theory and philosophy.

I also heard back from the folks at Lantern who read the manuscript of my first book. They made insightful comments and we’re presently working on making further improvements to the text. John Sorenson at Brock University also made positive comments about the chapter I submitted to the anthology he’s editing on critical animal studies.

So, perhaps, I shouldn’t feel so sad after all because, slowly but surely, all of us who working for animal liberation are making progress.

Well, it’s a long, long time

From May to December.

But the days grow short,

When you reach September.

And the autumn weather

Turns the leaves to gray

And I haven’t got time

For the waiting game.

Extract from September Song. Lyrics by Maxwell Anderson. Music by Kurt Weill.

Sue Coe is, quite simply, my favourite living artist.

For me, her work sits proudly along a continuum which includes George Grosz, Otto Dix, Kathe Kollwitz, on the one hand, and El Greco, Thomas Bewick and Goya, on the other. Her creativity rightfully stands on its own merit and how she skilfully uses it to explore social injustice, including their interrelationships.

Her latest book, Cruel, examines our instrumental use of animals for food. A great introduction to Sue and her work is to watch this video of a talk she gave recently. This is what The New York Times had to say about her recent related exhibit and The Wall Street Journal.

Learn more about Sue Coe here and here.

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This bust of Virginia Woolf stands in the garden at Monk's House where her ashes were scattered.

On this day in 1941, Virginia Woolf took her life. She took a short walk from her home, Monk’s House at Rodmell in Sussex, to commit suicide.

She walked into the River Ouse, after filling her coat pockets with stones.

More than perhaps any other literary figure I can think of, Virginia Woolf has a profound effect on me. And it’s hard to say why exactly. Other than to say vaguely she is a writer who inspires.

Reading her novels, short stories, letters and diaries as well as her nonfiction, essays and articles, provide a constant source of inspiration, fascination and delight. Some of the biographies and literary criticism that I have read about her also offer similar experiences.

Beware, however, as her life has generated an industry of activity, some of which is quite middling in quality.

I do not profess to be an expert. And nor do I strive to be one. Nevertheless, Virginia’s writing, whatever form it takes, stands apart from almost all others. With one or two notable exceptions, this point is repeatedly made to me whenever I read anyone else other than her.

I read her mostly at night, particularly when I cannot sleep. Virginia has become my companion in the hours between — dare I say? — night and day. I pick at random one of her books off the shelf, lay on the sofa, open it up at any page and begin to read. I am never disappointed.

This is why it is important for me to remember her on this day.

Richard Ryder speaking at the Critical Perspectives on Animals in Society conference at Exeter University.

The Critical Perspectives on Animals in Society Conference took place on Saturday, March 10 at the University of Exeter. It was organised by a group of scholars based at various universities throughout Britain. About 150 students, teachers, animal advocates and authors were in attendance. Presentations included speakers not only based in the United Kingdom but also the European Union.

My presentation, ‘Animal Rights: Moral Crusade or Political Movement?‘, is available to read here.

Long-standing animal advocate and author, Richard D. Ryder, gave the keynote presentation. He focused on key issues to successful campaigns, drawing from examples of successful initiatives from his many decades of activities. Other presentations explored such issues as animal law, the badger ‘cull’, representation of animals in the Bible and Marxism and a social theory of animal liberation.

The organisers are to be congratulated on a very successful and informative conference.

The Invention of the Savage Exhibition at the Musee du quai Branly in Paris.

Animal advocates know the spectacle of exhibiting animals in a zoo or in any other form of display is an affront to the animals’ welfare and their intrinsic value as individual sentient beings with moral and legal rights. Zoos, aquariums, roadside attractions, etc., are examples of institutionalised speciesism in which we (the human animal) exert power and control over all other species. Speciesism is often explained as being on a continuum of prejudice along with sexism, racism, heterosexism, etc.

The Invention of the Savage exhibit at the Musee du quai Branly in Paris demonstrates this continuum of prejudice and where it intersects on racial and colonial lines; however, it fails, notwithstanding much reference to the ‘other,’ to recognise the speciesist exploitation of animals alongside the various individuals and groups of people who were also put on display in one way or another.

This is a great shame because, otherwise, it is an incredibly powerful and moving exhibition which explains well how we construct racism and institutionalise in our culture. I reproduce here the museum’s brief description of the path taken by a visitor through the exhibit.

The first Act (‘Discovering the Other’) features the 15th and 18th Century arrival of exotic people in Europe, and their consideration as ‘strange foreigners’, categorized in four archetypes throughout the exhibition: the savage, the artist, the freak and the exotic ambassador.

The second act (‘Freaks & Exotics’) shows how early 19th Century brings the emergence of a new genre: ethnic shows. They first develop in theater cafés before spreading to larger and larger venues and being included in exhibitions and circuses. This process of staging the difference blurs the difference between the deformed and the foreign: physical, psychological and geographical abnormalities are first staged, and then become the focus of performances.

The third act (‘Spectacle of Difference’) reveals that between 1870 and World War Two, many venues start specializing in ethnic performance as the Crystal Palace, Barnum and Bailey in Madison Square, the Paris Folies Bergères or the famous Panoptikum in Berlin. It is the time of the professionalization of the activity, and exotic performance morphs into mass entertainment. Visitors are introduced to “actors of savageness” who become true genre professionals: Aboriginals, ‘lip-plate women’, Amazons, snake charmers, Japanese tightrope walkers or oriental belly dancers, but also the first black clown in France called “Chocolat” and drawn by Toulouse-Lautrec and legendary Buffalo Bill, whose show revolves on the native American Indian archetype, which forever brands the Far West imagery. Unbeknownst to them, audiences encounter made-up ‘savages’. Generally paid, the exhibited actively participate in building the imagery.

The fourth act (‘Staging’) shows how reconstructed ethnic villages, zoos, colonial and international fairs, science and spectacle merge in multiple places. Exotic peoples and physical strangeness are brought together on stage as if they both equally represented the realm of abnormality. Excess, grandeur and ephemeral reconstructions characterize this section of the exhibition with posters and painted dioramas, film ,screenings, photographs, automates and postcards. The practice starts in public gardens, following the one in Paris which, in 1877, is the first in Europe to exhibit tribes and groups. Such exhibitions lead to the invention of travelling Villages, like Carl Hagenbeck’s. Major tours start in 1874, and in 1878 until the 30s, international and colonial fairs include an exotic dimension to their programs.

In the Menagerie by Paul Friedrich Meyerheim (1894)

Reference to animals occur periodically throughout the exhibit but speciesism is not addressed as such nor is the ethical question raised about exhibiting animals. However, there are some powerful examples of animals alongside exhibited ‘savages’ where, for example, Africans were brought with elephants and displayed together in zoos.

It was exciting to see in the exhibit Paul Friedrich Meyerheim’s painting, ‘In the Menagerie,’ included as it demonstrates well how an animal keeper displays an African man carrying a crocodile on his shoulders with an elephant standing behind them.

The most important understanding I came away with from the ‘Invention of the Savage’ was how, in the course of a few hundred years, individual non-white people were considered at Royal Courts to be ‘pets’ and ‘novelty’ people. This led to groups, indeed families, of natives put on public display and white people paid an admission to see them at international exhibitions and in zoos. This transition from individuals to groups contributed toward embedding into Western culture an imperialist and white supremacist worldview. A socially constructed problem of the making during last few hundred years which we continue to struggle with today.

The animal rights movement is a social movement.

Sociologists define social movements as a ‘collective, organized, sustained, and noninstitutional challenge to authorities, powerholders, or cultural beliefs and practices.’⁠ (Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper. 2002. The Social Movement Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 3.)

From my research I discovered there were many similarities between social movements, including the animal rights movement, but there are two significant differences which makes our movement truly unique.

As political scientist Robert Garner explains

Moreover, for humans to campaign on behalf of them requires an altruism that is much more profound than for other social movements. Not only does it involve action to seek the advancement of the interests of another species, there is also a potential conflict between the interests of animals and those of humans. (Robert Garner. 2005. The Political Theory of Animal Rights. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 164.)

Animals can not organise themselves into their own social movement. Unlike humans, animals cannot be the agency of their own liberation. We have to do it for them on their behalf. This onerous responsibility makes it even more important for us to understand how to achieve animal rights.

Further, we have to tackle the complex issues of the benefits we accrue from our exploitation of animals if we are serious about establishing animal rights.

I tend to think these benefits are over stated by the animal industrial complex, which manipulates public opinion to fear any change in their use of animals. When the public think about their relations with animals they are reluctant generally to give up any pleasure (e.g., eating meat) or benefit (e.g., curing disease) they may feel is their entitlement.

But as anthropologist Barbara Noske asks ‘which human needs are being fulfilled and whose interests are promoted by the existing animal industrial complex?’ (Barbara Noske. 1989. Humans and Other Animals. London: Pluto Press. 23. Emphasis in original.)

Whatever may or may not be at risk, the benefits we do accrue from not relying upon animals to produce food and manage disease are considerable. History shows that social movements are accused routinely of seeking change which will adversely impact society if they achieve their objective. But it rarely, if ever, turns out to be true. Indeed, it is any wonder that we have made the social and economic progress that we have, given these outrageous claims.

Any sense of conflict between human and animal interests is questionable depending upon your point of view. Those who maintain that we must, for example, use animals to produce food and fight disease will say any rights animals may have must be subordinate to dominant human interests. This is to succumb to framing human and animal interests as a competition. A strategic dichotomy all too prevalent in human history: men superior to women; whites to blacks; natives to immigrants; heterosexuals to homosexuals; and so on. In our case, it is humans are superior to animals, which is called speciesism.

As society evolves and we become aware of our superiority prejudices we seek to resolve them as we become more aware of the resulting injustices. We readjust, accommodate and move on, in all likelihood, all the better for it.

The same, I have no doubt, will be true for animal rights; particularly when we understand if we want to feed the world’s population and encourage well-being that animal exploitation in factory farms and research laboratories are not only fundamentally problematic but also significant contributing factors to aiding famine and disease in the first place.

This is why it is vital animal rights is understood as part of a progressive agenda of social justice alongside other liberation movements.

Notwithstanding the need for the animal rights movement to enact Lord Houghton’s advice, animals are already in the political arena. It is the representatives of the animal industrial complex whom we should be concerned about.

Powerful commercial interests that profit from animal exploitation are well established political players. Their involvement in the political process helps to maintain the status quo, adopt regulations and pass laws that help animal users more than the animals. This political bias in favour of animal exploitation is reinforced by our continued institutionalised, commercial use of animals as property and disposable commodities.

There is a lot of money to be made from animal exploitation and many other non-financial gains. It is, therefore, not surprising that most of the regulations and laws relating to animals is more about protecting our interests in what we do to them than in us defending them from our actions.

Animals are represented in public policy by those who benefit from the power and control they exert over them. Animal researchers (not anti-vivisectionists) and factory farmers (not vegans) are more likely to be members of the policy-making networks which determine regulations and laws governing our relations with animals.

Consequently, animal-related public policy is more about how to use animals than protecting them from us.

Journal of Animal Welfare Law Autumn/Winter 2011

My article, ‘No Substitute for the Law,’ is published in the latest Journal of Animal Welfare Law produced by the Association of Lawyers for Animal Rights.

The article is available to read here. I conclude,

It is dispiriting to learn about animal cruelty. It is understandable to despair at the inadequacy of the law for animals and its enforcement. But it is also empowering to know how to work within society to ensure it has the necessary effective legislation and sufficient law enforcement resources to regulate and, ultimately, end animal exploitation. This is why there is no substitute for the law.

The good folks at Our Hen House have produced an excellent short film about Sue Coe. Sue describes herself as an artist whose work is reportage. To learn more about her work, go here and here.

Sue Coe: Art of the Animal from Our Hen House on Vimeo.

My first recollection of Sue Coe’s work was during the turbulent Thatcher years of the 1980s, which we appear to be reliving under the present Tory-led coalition government. I recall seeing copies of her ‘How to commit suicide in South Africa’ for sale in Compendium, the Camden Town independent, leftie bookshop beloved but now lost. Then, Sue received controversial coverage in the media for her drawings of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. I did not catch up with her work until I had moved to the USA and saw the exhibit, Porkopolis, in Washington, DC in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I wrote to her then as PETA’s Executive Director expressing admiration for her work and offering any assistance I could. Many years later, I went along to hear her speak in Baltimore when she was a guest lecturer at the local art institute. Her talk was like a breath of fresh air with all its insights, controversies and humour. Afterwards, I introduced myself and we went for coffee. Since then, we’ve become friends and colleagues.

She is the most important living artist in our time. The craft in her work is truly amazing. There is, also, a subtle cleverness in her referencing to the artists and their work that inspires her. I am proud of the fact that Sue was a regular in The Animals’ Agenda magazine I used to publish.

In the film, Sue describes herself as a worm turning over the soil reporting on the world she sees. I like to think of her more as someone who holds up a mirror to society challenging us to consider our stupid ways. But, in doing so, it is done with such an uncompromising vision that is remarkable if disturbingly beautiful.

We’re all the better for seeing the world through Sue Coe’s eyes.

A big part of the fun of Our Hen House is listening to Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer banter and bicker with each other.

The good folks at Our Hen House, Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer, recently interviewed me and our chat, which ranged over a number of issues, was published as part of Episode 97. You can listen to it here.

Our Hen House is a fantastic resource for anyone who cares about animals. It’s fun, upbeat and always interesting. But there’s a serious side, too. The Our Hen House Web site is also a rich source of information and resources on animal rights and vegan living.

In our conversation we explored such issues as the Animals and Society Institute, similarities and differences in animal rights and veganism between the UK and USA and gay rights and animal rights. I also spoke about my four key values — truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing — which I explore in my forthcoming book, Animal Dharma.

I recommend listening to this episode not only for my interview but also for all the other interesting features it includes. And while you’re at it, I suggest checking out previous podcasts.

My Animals and Society Institute colleague, Bee Friedlander, writes on the ASI Diary (blog) about the protest underway on Wall Street.

Anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock this past week has heard about “Occupy Wall Street,” a movement that seemingly has come out of nowhere, beginning in New York City a few weeks ago, and now spreading each day to more cities small and large across the United States. Is it the Arab Spring come to the U.S.? An incarnation of the 1960s student movement? A progressive version of the Tea Party?

Bee goes on to consider the presence of a concern for animals as part of this protest, including as an integral part of an emerging social movement with broad objectives challenging the present social and economic norms. Bee quotes from various people involved with and commenting on this initiative, including yours truly. She concludes,

A core belief of the Animals and Society Institute is that institutional change for animals and future success of the movement depend on our ability to position animal issues in the arena of public policy, including action in the mainstream political arena. Perhaps the activists will come to see the same is true for the other worthy causes they espouse.

She speaks for me in this regard.