Reference: Hovorka,
A.J. (2015). The Gender, Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual
Lecture: Feminism and animals: Exploring interspecies relations through
intersectionality, performativity and standpoint. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(1),
1-19.
In this article,
Hovorka attempts to argue that feminist geographical epistemology is suited to
analyze and critically investigate the plights and experiences of non-human
animals. In order to do this, she breaks down multiple concepts and theories
associated with feminist geographical thought (such as intersectionality and
performativity) and applies them to the study of non-human animals to show how
these various lenses will help to advance not only animal studies, but also
animal advocacy.
Purpose of article: “My objective for this
article, therefore, is to explore and enhance feminist theoretical dialogue
about, on and with animals in order to generate geographical knowledge that is
comprehensive and reflective of the interrelatedness of all beings that shape
individual, institutional and ideological realms” (1)
“On the one hand, animals need feminism.
Feminism is well suited and positioned to take on questions and issues of the
animal given its commitment to analysing the body, connecting discursive with
material constructions, emphasizing co-created situatedness, promoting empathic
understanding, exposing the logic of exclusion and politics of abjection,
attending to marginalized social groups and reflecting upon its own
participation in the ethics of representation and speaking for others” (2)
I definitely agree with what Hovorka is saying
in this passage. I appreciate the fact that Hovorka is looking at feminism as a
complex theoretical lens with multiple different purposes and perspectives
outside of just advocating for women’s rights. While there is a mention of the
promotion of empathetic understanding, which I’m assuming is making the all-too
familiar suggestion that women are able to empathize with non-human animals as
a result of their oppressive positions in society, she includes many other
characteristics of feminist theory. I especially like the mention of “exposing
the logic of exclusion and politics of abjection” as well as “attending to
marginalized social groups.” Although feminist theory is of course largely
concerned with the female experience in particular, what many people do not
know about feminism is that it also preoccupies itself with the study of many
other intersectionalities outside of gender (age, class, race) and how these
intersectionalities are areas of exclusion for many social groups. I do have a
concern, however, with some phrasing: if you’re writing a piece about non-human
animals, they should be referred to as such: non-human animals. This is something I learned in my “Animals in
Literature” class (which I can forgive for the lack of proper terminology in
the title because it would have sounded really clunky). From my understanding,
referring to non-human animals as “animals” and human animals as “humans” helps
to promote this divide between the species and put humanity on a pedestal. At
the end of the day, we’re all animals, and I’m surprised that in an academic
article about non-human animals (especially with a feminist slant!), the
researcher has not employed the proper terminology.
“Boundaries may be pushed in productive ways by
extending well-established feminist tenets regarding ‘whose knowledge counts
and how it is counted’ to animal subjects” (2)
Epistemology (otherwise known as, the theory of
knowing…the example I remember from Professor Mackintosh was, “how do you know
what you know?”) has always been of profound interest to me. Certain “ways of
knowing” are more privileged than other “ways of knowing,” like when you
compare white epistemologies with Aboriginal epistemologies. Whose knowledge is
more valued in society, whose voice gets heard, and whose does not? I’m not
completely sure what Hovorka is getting at in this passage though. I know she is
referring to epistemology, but is she talking about the epistemological divide
between humans and non-human animals in terms of human knowledge being
privileged over non-human animal knowledge? That’s the impression I received,
but if I’m misunderstanding something (to whoever could be reading this…)
please let me know.
“I certainly did not consider fully that these
animals were pivotal actors in shaping human livelihoods, let alone pay
attention to their own positionality, circumstances and experiences” (2)
Perhaps I’m taking this a little too far, but I
can’t help to be a little critical after taking my “Animals in Literature”
class. For my final paper I wrote about Flush
by Virginia Woolf, which is about the relationship between a dog and a
young woman. For my proposal, she made the comment that she liked how I
mentioned Flush (the dog) first when referring to him and Elizabeth (the young
woman) in the same sentence. She told me in the comments on my proposal to be
consistent with that order throughout the whole paper. I can understand why she
made this comment, because often non-human animals are subordinate to humans
when they are both being mentioned in the same sentence. I find it kind of
problematic in this example that the non-human animals’ role in “shaping human
livelihoods” is being made to seem more important than “their own
positionality, circumstances and experiences.” But on the other hand, this
might just be Hovorka admitting to her own shortcomings with regards to the
study of non-human animals. She says that as a feminist geographer studying
“urbanization, gender and everyday life in Botswana” (2), she did not consider
the presence of non-human animals. Regardless of whether or not her statement
is problematic or not, I think it is important to highlight how even feminist
theorists do not always recognize non-human animals, which serves as a reminder
that even marginalized human groups must be careful with how non-human animals
are being treated in a research context. In my mind there is no question that
non-human animals are more oppressed and more marginalized than any human group
on earth.
“Yet as Wolch and Emel (1998, xi) claim,
‘Animals are so indispensable to the structure of human affairs and tied up
with our visions of progress and the good life that we are unable to fully see
them’” (2) = POSSIBLE TITLE?
“Finally,
some worry that attention to animal lives and issues will divert attention from
more important or urgent human concerns such as violence, racism and poverty
(Adams and Donovan 1995; Gaard 1993); indeed some purport that feminism should
only concern itself with human liberation (Gaarder 2011)” (3)
This makes me so angry! Why are human concerns
“more important or urgent” than what is happening to non-human animals? I’m going
to try really hard not to go on a tirade here, but while I’m not going to
undervalue the importance of drawing attention to issues like “violence, racism
and poverty,” if humans were being treated like non-human animals are treated
in factory farms (and I’m not even talking on a mass scale here! I’m saying if
even one or two humans were treated this way) it would spark a worldwide
outcry. The people responsible for their crimes would be thrown in jail for
their entire lives, and depending on where they live, maybe even receive the
death penalty. If you think about it like that,
I think it’s completely ignorant, self-centered and downright RIDICULOUS to
argue that “attention to animal lives and issues will divert attention [my emphasis]” from humans. While I’m not
surprised that these sentiments exist, I am nevertheless appalled by them.
Non-human animals should receive much, much
more attention than they currently receive, and it’s completely stupid to
think that giving their extremely “important” and “urgent” concerns the
attention they deserve will detract from human concerns. Now, the second half
of this statement claims that feminism should only focus on human liberation.
There is no way a true feminist (ie. one who is informed enough about feminism
to know that it’s not just about women…) would ever say anything like that.
Maybe I’m coming on a little too strong in saying this (not that I would ever
actually hold back…), but that sounds like a comment only a bigot would make.
Excluding non-human animals from feminist study is, in my opinion, completely
contradictory to everything feminism stands for. Feminism does not pick and
choose which social groups it believes to be most important, but rather
attempts to liberate them all.
Non-human animals are certainly no exception.
“Empathy for animal suffering quickly became
feminized, however, and mocked as a movement of ‘emotional little old ladies in
tennis shoes’ and feminist ideas have gained little traction amongst prominent
(predominately male) social theorists (Gaard 2012)” (3)
I’m trying so, so hard to keep my lunch from
reappearing right now. Emotional. Little. Old. Ladies. In. Tennis. Shoes. Are
you kidding me? I despise every last word of that statement, hence why I thought
they each needed their own sentence. Like I touched upon in my notes about
Merriman’s article: WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE A WOMAN TO CARE ABOUT OTHER LIVING
BEINGS? In another English course I took, we learned about empathy in short
stories and how it is generated. Outside of a literary context, we learned that
empathy is generated in many other ways outside of similar experiences and
shared social positionalities (there’s the “women are naturally more intimately
connected to animals” debate that I love so much again…). How is it that I
could empathize with friends who have lost family members that I have not lost?
It’s because I actually took the time to reflect on how I would feel if I lost
my father, or grandparent, etc. I made a conscious effort to put myself in
their place and imagine how I would feel, what I would do, and how I would
think if it happened to me. You don’t need to be a woman or a member of another
marginalized group to be able to empathize. You just have to care enough to
try.
“Since the 1990s, animal geographers have
recognized the centrality of animals in human society and acknowledge animals
as subjects and distinct social group worthy of consideration. Animals are not
simply natural resources, units of production, or entities to be trapped,
counted, mapped and analysed (Wolch and Emel 1998)” (4)
It’s kind of messed up to think that animal
geographers only started to think about animals in this context 25 years ago.
When I looked up Animal Studies on Wikipedia, in the History section the first
work it mentioned was Peter Singer’s Animal
Liberation written in 1975. While it wasn’t an established discipline at
the time, and there might be earlier examples of this literature in centuries
before, from my “Animals in Literature” class we looked at The Cry of Nature by John Oswald, which was written in 1791. So it
seems that people were concerned about the well-being of animals LONG before
animal geography came about in the 1990s. But why did it take so long for the
discipline to emerge? Non-human animals have been with us for beyond our entire
human existences, but it wasn’t until 25 years ago that animal geographers
began to think of non-human animals as beings worth much more than “entities to
be trapped, counted, mapped and analysed.”
“Animal geographers recognize that animals are
essential in explanations of human –environment or spatial relations because
interdependence between species is irrefutable and animals are deeply
intertwined in our own lives (Urbanik 2012; Wolch and Emel 1995). They also
explore increasingly the particular lives, identities and experiences of
animals themselves”
Once again…the problematic ordering. What’s
more important and worthy of our attention? How non-human animals benefit us?
Or the well-being and experiences of non-human animals in and for itself?
Thesis: “Taking cues from existing feminism –
animal scholarship, I argue that contemporary threads in feminism are well
suited and positioned to enhance, extend and complicate research and debates in
animal geographies while engaging animal issues and subjects offers new
pathways for feminism” (4)
Good definition of intersectionality:
“Intersectional analysis names and describes hidden acts of discrimination and
illuminates ‘the way in which any particular individual stands at the
crossroads of multiple groups’ (Minow 1997, 3)” (4)
This definition will be useful in the next
couple of weeks when I explore intersectionalities in more detail.
“Feminist geographical contributions to
intersectionality illustrate how differences and inequalities emerge through
co-production of space and subjectivity as manifested in discursive imaginings
and material placements” (4)
“Both sexism and speciesism produce a ‘saming’
and ‘othering’ of women and animals, denying them rationality, agency and
history (relative to men and humans) and enabling a moral detachment that
creates and perpetuates oppressive practices and institutions (Gruen and Weil
2010)” (5)
I like how Hovorka is framing her connections
between feminism and animal advocacy based on how women and non-human animals
are treated in society as opposed to the female gender’s particular ability to
connect to non-human animals. I really can’t stress enough how much I hate the
“women are closer to nature” stereotype. Feminists aren’t preoccupied with the
plights of non-human animals because we as a gender have a greater connection
with them and are more emotional. No no! Feminists are preoccupied with the
plights of non-human animals because feminists are preoccupied with the plights
of all marginalized groups. It’s as
simple as that.
“Geographers working at the crossroads of
feminism and animals or within animal geography itself…explore…how racial and
gendered notions of human boundary-making shape processes of animal domestication,
containment or extermination (Anderson 1995; Bull 2009; Emel 1995; Gillespie
2014); and how gender, class and/or race influence different attitudes or
practices towards animals (Howell 2000; Wolch, Alex, and Lassiter 2000)” (5)
The idea of “boundary-making” is probably what
fascinates me the most about how humans and non-human animals, as well as
different human groups, are socially separated and categorized. By settinthese
boundaries, like for example that humans can “speak” (by our definition of
course, we have sophisticated language) while non-human animals cannot, we
believe ourselves to be superior. Hierarchies are formed with those at the top
being given the authority to use and abuse those at the bottom. We make
boundaries (if you ask me, they’re more like excuses) that allow us to justify
our ill treatment of marginalized human and non-human groups. Because cows,
pigs and chickens (among countless others) are incapable of “speech,” taste
good, provide protein and are easy to mass produce and kill, we can eat them.
We think we’re smarter than them and more valuable than them and so we justify
putting them on our plates. Aboriginals don’t have the same cultural values as
the all-powerful white people, they don’t think the same or even look the same,
and so that means we have every right to throw them into residential schools
and literally and figuratively beat their beliefs out of them. From a
biological standpoint women are not as physically strong as men, and so that
means we have a right to overpower them and control them. That’s how society thinks: we create a system
of characteristics that we value, and all those who do not match up are either
“dominat[ed], contain[ed] or exterminate[ed].”
(middle of page 5, start of paragraph “Feminists…”)
“Briefly, to be a man or woman in Botswana
means that you are associated with and have access to certain animals that, in
turn, come with particular opportunities and/or constraints” (5)
From here Hovorka goes on to describe how
cattle (which are the more prosperous with owners receiving help from the
government for their businesses) has been assigned to men, who in turn make
more money, while chickens (which provide less money and are “invisible in
policy and programming”(5)) are associated with women, who in turn make less
money. I never would have thought of non-human animals and gender in this
context. To me, the pairing of gender and non-human animals has always led me
to think about the feminisation of vegetarianism and animal advocacy. I would
have never thought that particular non-human animals long before being
slaughtered and put on a plate are being divided up to men and women.
“Intersectionality thus complements threads in
animal geography purporting the centrality of animals; it generates
possibilities for considering what an individual animal may experience in the
world on account of who they are (based on their own sex, breed, age, etc.),
where they are symbolically and materially located (in relation to humans or to
other nonhumans) and with whom they are connected” (6)
I’ve never thought about intersectionalities
being applied to non-human animals, but I am definitely interested. There’s no
doubt that particular species are valued over other species (for example, we
tend to value dogs more as pets than lets say…rats), that age certainly matters
(keeping with the dog example, people often gravitate towards puppies when
choosing a pet as opposed to opting for a rescue where the age may not be
known) and I know for my family, the sex of the animal also matters (we’ve
always had male animals because females will have periods and trail blood in
the house if they are not fixed. I apologize for how blunt that sounds but it’s
the truth!). I can certainly get on-board with Hovorka’s argument for feminism
being applied to the plights and experiences of non-human animals: especially
when you consider intersectionalities, which are very important to feminist thought.
“[Feminism] encourages disaggregation of
‘nature’ in feminist geography research so that animals are no longer lumped together
with other components of the natural world but rather are recognized as vital
actors (re)producing relations of power that shape broad structural socio-spatial
dynamics and everyday life” (6)
Good definition of performativity to hold
onto!: “…performativity is the process through which social subjects (body as
labelled, inscribed, socially constructed), subjectivities (lived experience of
a body) and spatialities (bodies embedded in a particular place) are produced
and reproduced (terminology adapted from Grosz 1995; Longhurst 2005)” (7)
“Second, animal performativity requires moving
beyond language such that matter itself begins to matter (Barad 2003). Here
those innate characteristics and behaviours associated especially with nonhuman
animals resurface to render animals as active, communicative participants in
the creation of meaning” (7)
I like this a lot! It all goes back to breaking
down those boundaries. In this example, the language barrier that I mentioned
earlier that people usually use to distinguish humans from non-human animals
and solidify that hierarchy is being challenged. I must say though that I find
it odd that “nonhuman” is all of a sudden being used…where was it in the rest
of the article?
“Performativity does not feature prominently in
animal scholarship…When engaged, the concept tends to highlight human
performance as wrapped up and manifested in human –animal relations” (8)
I think this is one of the biggest problems:
the fact that researchers and the public in general can’t seem to look at
non-human animals outside of the context of their interactions and associations
with humans. Non-human animal performativity should be investigated in its own
right, and if we have to bring humans into it, non-human animals must remain
the focus (for example, instead of asking what non-human animals do for humans,
perhaps it should be the other way around).
“…interviews confirmed the importance of
donkeys to people’s livelihoods and revealed intimate connections that people form
with their donkeys as companions and even family members. Yet interviews also
revealed the general belief that donkeys are made to work for humans and
require harsh treatment to ensure that they get the job done” (8)
Hovorka here is using another example from her
research in Botswana. I can’t stand contradictions like this. If we were
talking about a human family where the husband treated his wife like this (she’s
a “companion” and “family member” but she was “made to work” for her husband),
in most societies that would be completely unacceptable. You don’t treat human
family members this way, so why are you treating a non-human family member this
way?
“Emotional assessments involved examining the
donkey’s ear position, facial expression, neck position and their interaction
with both a stranger and their owner. We found that the majority of donkeys
surveyed were afflicted with an overall sad demeanour by displaying
unresponsiveness, avoidance and disinterest” (9)
In Hovorka’s work, she puts the lives of the
donkeys on the forefront. Although language is of course a major barrier, she
does physical and even emotional assessments (the aforementioned example
details how she carried out this emotional assessment) in order to determine
the donkey’s perceived well-being. No one ever thinks or talks about the
emotions of non-human animals outside of perhaps their pets (when my mother and
sister and I leave the house, we can tell our dog is sad by how he puts his
head down and stares at the door). I especially appreciate the fact that
Hovorka targeted a non-human animal who is often very negatively stereotyped in
society (they’re often associated with stubbornness, laziness and stupidity) to
perhaps suggest how these qualities may come about as a result of sadness and
an overall poor well-being.
“Performativity thus centres the animal and
attends to its subject identity construction and subjective lived experience as
connected to its broader spatial context… For feminist geographers, animal
performativity offers an opportunity to embrace all sorts of bodies and
embodied lives as legitimate and meaningful sites of knowledge production” (9)
“Standpoint, as emerging from second-wave
feminist thought, is a theory and approach that makes three central claims
(Hartsock 1983; Harding 1993; Binnie 2011). First, knowledge is socially
situated whereby individual knowledge and experiences are based on one’s
particular positionality, which in turn shapes one’s perspectives and opinions
in daily life…Second, marginalized groups are socially situated in ways that
make it more possible for them to be aware of things and ask questions than it
is for the nonmarginalized…Third, research, especially focused on power
relations, should begin with the lives of the marginalized to acknowledge and
incorporate their perspectives into the construction of scientific knowledge”
(9-10)
Since I don’t have a lot of experience with
this theory (I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it, unless
perhaps it’s been called something else in the past), I thought it would be
useful to include Hovorka’s descriptions of what the theory claims so that I
can understand it better and perhaps use it for future reference.
“Clearly provocative, animal standpoint raises
questions regarding whether animal realities and worldviews can be known to
humans. In his exploration of ‘what is it like to be a bat’, Nagel (1974)
concludes that humans cannot comprehend ‘bat phenomenology’ given they are
limited by their mental apparatus and may misread the communication or proceed
along incorrect assumptions” (10)
I like how this has been phrased. Instead of
ostracizing non-human animals as if their inability to “speak” to us is their
own shortcoming, Hovorka is recognizing humanity’s shortcomings in
understanding non-human animals. It’s refreshing to see a perspective where it
is placing the onus on us to try to understand them, even though (as the bat
example suggests) it may not be possible.
Good summary of standpoint: “Standpoint thus
pushes to the foreground animals as subjects with particular circumstances,
experiences and worldviews” (11)
“As a feminist geographer, I believe that
feminism offers perspectives and analyses that transcend sole focus on women,
gender and sexism – indeed feminism is a powerful force within science that
should not be limited in its application to particular (human) subjects or
topics” (12)
I completely agree! Like I said before,
excluding non-human animals (or any social group for that matter…and non-human
animals are certainly a social group!) goes against everything feminism stands
for!
“We should come to know, however partially, the
animals with whom we coexist in order to sustain webs of connection and an
ethic of respect, mutuality, caring and friendship (Wolch 2002, 734)” (13)
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
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