From Animals to Anarchism: Open Letter #3
| November 14, 2014 | Posted by under Uncategorized |
This open letter takes a critical look at the politics of animal rights and animal liberation. It argues that animal rights as a philosophy is fundamentally flawed as it does not go far enough to criticise the contemporary political structures that gave rise to the animal exploitation industry. It points out that for animal liberation to succeed it must be allied to a wider political critique of capitalism and social relations, namely in the form of anarchism. Along the way it also identifies inconsistency where some anarchists have applied their own critiques when it comes to examining human-animal relations, offering a challenge to them as well. Both authors have been involved in animal rights campaigning and anarchist organising for many years.
It can be downloaded for free here, or paper copies can be purchased from Active Distribution.
A few further resources of interest:
Website.
Red, Black and Green. ‘Animal rights from an anarchist perspective.’ Produced by Paul Gravett.
http://network23.org/redblackgreen/
Zines.
”Nailing Descartes To The Wall’: Animal Rights, Veganism and Punk Culture.’ By Len Tilburger and Chris P. Kale (2014)
‘Challenging Ideas on Human-Nonhuman relations.’ By Benedict Quetzal (2011)
(Both available via. Active Distribution)
Also worth looking at are:
* Kevin Watkinson’s Veganism: Politics or Practice? and ‘Veganish’ or vegan? An animal rights perspective.
* Against the Grain on Reclus
* Unconditional Anti-Oppression
* Why confusion is a necessary phase in activism from the Aphro-ism blog.
* Saryta Rodriguez’s Exploding the myth of the Moral Underclass on the Reasonable Veganism blog.
* Benny Malone’s Occam’s Razor and Veganism from AR Zone.
* Some thoughts on the debates around single-issue campaigns – a podcast from VegFest London 2015.
* Freeganism is not anarchy, its just easy – a zine published on ContraInfo.
If we have missed any, let us know and we will add to this list.
A blog based on the ideas within ‘from animals to anarchism’.
https://network23.org/orcasandanimals/
Burning Hearts Media have posted all the filmed lectures and workshops from the Resistance Ecology conference on their website. Well worth taking a look.
http://burningheartsmedia.com/workshops/
[…] http://dysophia.org.uk/from-animals-to-anarchism-open-letter-3/ […]
This is generally a very good overview of animal rights/lib and anarchism and a welcome contribution to the debate. Anyone who’s interested enough to want to find out more should see my blog Red black green: animal rights from an anarchist perspective: https://network23.org/redblackgreen/
Paul
[…] also From Animals to Anarchism by Dysophia for more on the topic and a good reading […]
[…] ‘From animals to anarchism’ by Kevin Watkinson and Donal O’Driscoll. (2014) http://dysophia.org.uk/from-animals-to-anarchism-open-letter-3/ […]
[…] blog arose out of a pamphlet called ‘from animals to anarchism‘ (free to download), and will feature occasional short articles based on the ideas contained […]
This is generally a very good overview of animal rights/lib and anarchism
[…] challenge to veganism has been set out in the pamphlet ‘from animals to anarchism’, where the authors argue for the integration of vegan praxis and anarchism, so the various forms […]
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[…] From animals to anarchism by Kevin Watkinson and Donal O’Driscoll. […]