Decolonialism doesn’t explain forms of nonhuman objectification

Fragment

Decolonialism does not explain forms on nonhuman objectification and human “ruling via definition” in regards to “(nonhuman) animality” (which in itself is yet a term to be argued about and to be analyzed).

Decolonialism is one thing, Animal Objectification has its own histories, even when problematics converge and overlap e.g. in terms of ecological, eco-social contextualities. Brining decolonialism in as the solution for forms of animal objectification puts all hope on intra-human cultural diversity and ignores the dilemma of human definition of animal identity, which is simply not considered to be a historical major mistake seen in itself.

Decolonialism applies to intra-human constellations while the schism between “animal” and “human”, as some form of great hierarchically applied identities, stands outside of intra-human conflicts.

The notion of “human“ and the notion of “animal” differs with individuals, differs in different times and in different cultures. Bringing us all together under the assumption of functionability can’t solve the source of conflict between the predominant varied human notions of “human” and varied human notions of “nonhuman and animal” which resulted in today’s settings that we persistently have with animal objectifications.

Also, the problem with decolonialism to be applied as a tool to dismantle animal objectification raises the question of why the histories of animal objectification can’t be addressed with their own complicated specifics.

Antibiologistic Animal Sociology

Subversion and Oppression


Who pretends that subversion functioned differently in society than oppressive patterns, with both relying on similar basic assumptions about the human-animal-nature schisms – mostly in regards to the phenomenons of “existential meaningfulness” and the question of “self-authority”?
antibiologistic animal sociology

Earthworms and animal rights

We believe that if our common notion of animal rights excludes invertebrates, like earthworms, we need to a.) analyze the speciesist paradigms that segregate animality, and b.) question the legitimacy of a solely humancentric (ethical, legal and philosophical) conception of a fundamental “right” on life and freedom.
Antispeciesist Animal Sociology

The mild speciesism continuum

 
mild_speciesism_1e conscious

Conscious about speciesism
And yet you study nonhuman animals
Through indirect, abstract, theory-driven lenses
Not through the uniquely and ultimately
emancipated channels
of perception
your antispeciesist views would take.

– Palang LY

See also thought: Defining Nonhumans as ‘INSTINCTUAL’ is species-derogative and biologistic

Anti-Speciesism, another angle

FRAGMENT

Making Anti-Speciesism itself a subject

We rightly want to ask people to do more than donate money to animal advocacy groups. We rather hope that people make others aware of veganism – in ethical terms. So only or mainly talking about vegan health and cooking (for instance) isn’t doing the job (far less is promoting vegan consumerism).

In which way to thematize speciesism?

1. By comparison …

A lot of the drawings of analogies are taken in reference to racism and sexism. In the discussions though the weight tends to lay more on the specifics of racist and sexist psychology, in those analogies, than on the juxtaposed speciesist type of psychological mindsets.

2. With cases …

On the other hand activists who discuss actual on the spot atrocities that are taking place and which mark those faces of speciesism, they do show the sheer extremes of killing, and those extremes again can’t be directly compared with other forms of discrimination. (At least we are confronted here with the fact that every category of an atrocity has own contextualities.)

How do you thematize speciesism?

In the frame of human anthropology? Or by comparing biological observations and findings on nonhuman / humans … ? Sociologically?

How?

My first suggestion is – cos I really do see that too little we describe how speciesism psychologically works in practice, is: let us have a look at the HOW’S of how speciesism manifests in basically many varying forms.

This is a highly fragmentary list for going into that direction:

QUOTE:

Many forms of speciesism

Objectifying nonhuman animals takes various forms:

– in legal terms nonhumans are classified as property

– in religious terms the separation is being made spiritually, man is preferred and given the right to dominate all that is on earth

– philosophical schools may give an array of different reasons for why whichever form of speciesism might be ethically sound or a right view to maintain

– the natural sciences differentiate between beings driven by instinct, the lower forms of life, the higher forms and man with the supposedly most complex make up of mind and brain.

– carnism could be said to be a term for one form of speciesism that classifies domesticated farm animals only (or finally, as in the case of horses and some exotic animals that are eaten such as ostriches) as “meat” or suppliers of food.

– pets on the other side are. in spite of being loved by our society, also affected by speciesist views on them.

– wild animals are forced to make up the object for hunters and hunting culture’s needs to re-exercise continuously the idea of a primeval and supposedly ideal condition of man as the hunter and gatherer.

– but also wild animals are affected by argumentations that target them in terms of whether they are intrusive species or should be seen as protectable.

For every animal species we seem to get one or more forms of speciesist views, classifications, argumentations. In every aspect that defines the human view on his or her environment we seem to come across a derogative stance on nonhumans.

When we discuss speciesism we should bear in mind how complex and difficult to analyze the subjugative view on animal life is in our cultures and societies.

-ENDQUOTE, source

I think taking a direct look at the cloaked psychology behind speciesism (itself), we can get closer to the framework that enables a speciesist society in the first place.

With ‘cloaked psychology’ I don’t mean a model such as it was discussed with the ‘carnism’-term, which focussed on two forms of speciesism basically: pets that are loved, yet have no rights, and so called farm animals that are being killed for “food”, and have of course also no rights.

With ‘cloaked psychology’ I mean questions of why as a fact human traits are valued over nonhuman animal traits, or the same goes for ‘interests’, features, attributes, realities, etc.

By breaking down the probably manifold components of the speciesist framework, we can find our way through a mess of a collective-psychological character, I think.

 

People like this: Camas Davis

People like this: https://twitter.com/CamasD prove that speciesism can indeed be compared to racism, sexism … as far as the fact is concerned that the problem lies 100% in the deranged psyche of the perpetrator. It’s a given pretext that is employed to make things look as if the targeted subject had features, characteristics or otherwise such an ‘essence of being’ that the very obvious injustice inflicted by the oppressor against a chosen victim would be thus justified (yeah really usually the gravest forms of injustice are brought about by some rational argument – rational in the view of the oppressor).

The reasons of course why a victim is chosen by a sadistic human group has political implications, each in own complex forms.

Nonhuman animals are picked as victims, in the case of a speciesist agenda, to seek dominance via the complete physical annihilation in order to make the own species “manifest” as the winner species, as the super-ordinate god-like form of existence, as an all knowing, an all controlling species, that can even declare “the other” to be “just a piece of meat” – which is but something digestible and palatable. (see for that: Eating, crushing, as a form of wielding power over other living beings … Elias Canetti in ‘Crowds and Power’ pp. 210-211.

This female person works for http://wusthofedge.com/ and she runs her own “meat collective” in the state of Oregon where she seeks to intellectually make speciesism look like a necessity for the human condition.

Instead of accepting human cultural (and thus ethical) re- and evolution, this person puts all her fantasy and physical eager into trying to get us where nobody except the sadist even came from: she literally takes carnism to a wannabe intellectualized level.

A sad horizon for anyone

She goes to “humane” farms, dares to put her sadist hand onto the nonhumans to “stroke” them, to later involve their tortured bodies into her group-driven-ritualistic abstractions of what is one of the most extreme forms of speceisism that I’ve seen to date.

The severity of speciesism in her case bases on an idea of promulgating flesh-handling in connection with the ideologization of objectifying nonhuman animals as a form of a supposed overall human ethical enlightenment. She is one of those speciesist ideologists that wish so hard to undermine the very ethics and morals that base on the pure and undeflected commonsense human form of reasoning.

A thought about religious slaughter

Ban religious slaughter in the European Union – Occupy for AnimalsPETITION

What upsets me specifically about religious slaughter is that it’s done on behalf of a religion, on behalf of a god. When our messed up society, our morally derailed society craves for dead corpses of tortured nonhumans I can say, well of course, our society is totally unethical, they don’t respect animals and basically also not humans, and not nature. What counts in our society is good old greed and profit.

But when a religion teaches its adherents that you ought to slaughter, then that what should stand for the sanctity of phenomena – the act of religion / being religious, having created religion – turns into the total negation, and really the TOTAL negation of life and of the value of life.

If people can’t respect other animals because the natural sciences have designed an explanatory model that puts humans of top of everything biologically, then that’s one thing, but if religion degrades life and tries to sell its lies of “love” then the world stands upside down.

I don’t understand why some people respect religion more than life.

 

Necrophilia and art

Conlflating the Topoi

FLEISCH. Material, Objekt, Denkfigur | 83. Kunsthistorischer Studierendenkongress vom 29.11. bis 2.12.2012 am Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Wien http://www.univie.ac.at/kskwien.

This congress dedicated to the subject of “meat” or flesh, “as a matrial, object and figure of thought” fully mistook or intentionally conflated the notion of flesh in term of lust and it’s religious “stigma”, and factual death.

The conflation does exist – not just here but it has a long historical tradition which itself sheds light on the anchor-points of the working dialektics of speciesism.

The flesh of lust is the protected flesh of the privileged human being, in a world that separates animal vs. human.

The meat on the other hand is the wish to digest death, to become the master of torture, who rules over the life and death of beings we as humans will never understand, since we cling to our phantasy of human superiority, our human megalomania.

“The human” as the center of the universe is already questionable. Now “the human” (a concept) leading humanity itself ad absurdum through his/her wish for an ultimate domination will be an interesting decay of mind and life to watch in the individual fates.

Normally religious beliefs are incompatible with Animal Rights, Earth Rights, and individual rights overall

Religions and the sacrifice of nonhuman animals , some links ( all accessed 21th Oct 2012 )

Animal slaughter in Islam is ritualisticNo human behavior is more hidden or misunderstood than offering sacrifice, both animal and humanAnimal Sacrifice … in the 21st century!Unethical Practice of ANIMAL SACRIFICEOver 100 million animals are slaughtered annually during Eid ul-Adha across the Islamic world within a 48 hour period

Buddhism banned animal sacrifice in the regions where it predominantly occured. However on Buddha’s birthday animal sacrifices take place, an gruesome mass killing carried out by various Hindu sects … http://www.buddhisma2z.com/content.php?id=470http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Animal-Sacrifice-on-Buddhas-Birthday/407150862641376http://www.stopanimalsacrifice.org

“China: Buddhism and Taoism generally prohibit killing of animals; some animal offerings, such as fowl, pigs, goats, fish, or other livestock, are accepted in some Taoism sects and beliefs in Chinese folk religion. In Kaohsiung, animal sacrifices are banned in Taoist temples” says Wikipedia, this however is not totally true, there is a Buddhist temple http://wikimapia.org/142877/Tzu-Chi-Temple where a horrific form of animal sacrifice take place, as I mentioned in this blog post about the murder of pigs in the Sanhsia Tzushi Temple.

The majority of pagans today in the Western societies are supposedly vegetarian or vegan

Vegan Pagans http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegan-Pagans , http://veganpagans.tribe.net , http://diannesylvan.typepad.com , Animal Rights: My Pagan Value

Overall I want to note: Most religions are incompatible with Animal Rights and Earth Rights, simply because they put a god or gods, a divine concept, on top of all existence in a hierarchical manner. Paganism and some religions stand inbetween, depending on the features of their god/gods. The best is to let your reason speak, and not any contractualist and homoncentrically driven collectivist selfishness.

To argue that our secular societies also kills nonhuman animals, on an industrial scale, does not take anything away from the moral blindness that religions display in regard to other than human life, individual life and justice based on ‘common sense’ reasoning; after all religions falsely claim they have something to do with “love” and “the creation”. Any society has to face the consequences of the factul atrocities it commits – be it in the name of progress or a religious belief held.

The incapacity of humans to relate to the world and the universe in a co-creative, mutually respectful and sensitive way, brings with it an undesired incapacity to deal with one another as humans in a peaceful way. You can’t have the one without the other, you can’t arbitrarily draw a line between all the factors that matter for a morally sound coexistence … . But try to convince people of that … the things that never seemed to matter morally so much, someone might think, how could these things matter now? Well, welcome to the 21 Century!