Within the French-speaking anti-speciesist movement, many of us (?) view nature as a fiction stemming from the speciesist order of domination (an ideological category, therefore), which takes the form of a mysticism/religion that is never explicitly presented as such, yet serves as the founding myth of our civilisation.
For those interested in the subject, a few texts have been translated into English, available here: https://resources.end-of-speciesism.org/category/analyses/
I am thinking in particular of “Doing away with the concept of Nature, back to ethics and politics”; “Appropriation and the concept of Nature”; “Humanism and the promotion of a natural order”; “On superiority”; “The myth of species”; and also, to a lesser extent, “Animals storming heaven”…
YvesBon
Thanks for the questions!
I’m not a Gramsci specialist, but it seems to me that he developed the notion of the war of ideas and cultural hegemony within a specific framework linked to the class struggle (he was a communist). It seems to me that in many cases, and particularly in the case of the animal issue, we find ourselves opposed not only to the agri-food industry and the material interests of a fringe of the population, but also to the identity and community interests of each human, who is posited as dominant and privileged in relation to other animals, and who may think that his rights and the consideration he enjoys depend on his dominant (human) status—a status marked in particular by our consumption of meat, by our contempt for other animals. The cultural struggle, then, is not only between the possessing classes, who more or less have a monopoly on the dominant ideological discourse (cultural hegemony), but also between the identity interests of the vast majority of humans—which would also explain humanity’s immense inertia on the animal issue, its unwillingness to take it on board. It’s just one hypothesis among many, but it’s one that I personally favour. In short, all that to say that it seems to me we’re in a very difficult situation where the cultural struggle has to succeed in subverting things as deep-rooted as our human identity (as we would say white identity or male identity, for example).
Well, my answer doesn’t really answer your question?
There’s also a good chance that achieving significant changes for liminal animals, and even just campaigning for them, if accompanied by strong media hype, will raise people’s level of sensitivity to animals in general. This is something that seems very likely to me, but for which I haven’t seen any research carried out—it would be worthwhile to carry out some on the subject, given that these campaigns (particularly for liminal animals) are much more successful, as we can see in France with the PAZ association (https://zoopolis.fr), than those concerning livestock. If they also have an indirect effect that benefits other animals, then it seems to me that’s a major asset in running such campaigns.
Concerning bees, I didn’t see the direct link between the question of bee species and the question of individuals; why bees in particular? Besides, I don’t think they’re particularly invisible? There’s a lot of talk in France about the decline of bees (but without any concern for individuals)...
I have in mind several different examples of cultural strategies that are well known in France, but probably less so (or not at all) in the US.
- One very effective cultural strategy is that of Paris Animaux Zoopolis / Projet Animaux Zoopolis (https://zoopolis.fr), which deals with wild animals (not RWAS) and liminal animals, but also recreational fishing and farmed fish for restocking rivers, and which, by changing the public’s image of animals (e.g. rats), undoubtedly has a general cultural impact that changes the public’s view of animals. PAZ uses the cultural (media) impact of its battles to put pressure on political figures (mayors, MPs) and achieve greater cultural effectiveness or even new laws (its other objective): I’ve written a description of the work of this association, and how it uses cultural struggle very effectively to bring about concrete, sometimes legislative changes. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cj2w9xd9vNjNBGuTpe_WNjIi816E_2roIx_FnK6cvug/edit
- A cultural strategy that would be more effective if it had a bit more funding: the organisation of the World Days for the End of Fishing (and Fish Farming: https://end-of-fishing.org) and for the End of Speciesism (https://end-of-speciesism. org), in which about a hundred organisations from all five continents participate each year (Africa is still poorly represented), and whose aim is to penetrate the culture of the animal advocacy movement by proposing that it take part in these World Days and that once a year (while waiting for something better!) it adopt a discourse centred either on the denunciation of speciesism or on the question of aquatic animals (fish, shrimps), elements that the movement hardly takes into account spontaneously. The strategy is cost-effective (one full-time staff member can reach two times a year hundreds of organisations, some of which will then carry out campaigns), but suffers from its limitations: one full-time staff member can’t organise each year more than two days of action, nor can he or she better monitor and advise the organisations. The ideal situation would be to organise real campaigns throughout the year, or over two weeks, etc. In short, to have a full-time worker more. See more here:
https://end-of-fishing.org/en/theory-of-change/
https://end-of-fishing.org/en/plans/
https://end-of-fishing.org/en/kpis/
- One cultural and community-building strategy is the Réseau Sentience (Sentience Network), a network of student associations focused on challenging speciesism, promoting sentientism and effective altruism, and vegetalizing university canteens. It currently exists in France, but it would like to export it to the US, India and elsewhere. The network is now run by a small team, and each local branch is autonomous but linked to the network and run by students on a volunteer basis (and the branches are to some extent funded by their universities!) The number of actions carried out is significant, the aim is to occupy cultural space, and many students train as activists and then remain part of the movement, either joining existing organizations or creating new initiatives. See its Theory of Change: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tpaIfaUrG_7Wyach3O64iYE1fJnai-pgadyyswiXksw/editThere are other examples, of course, such as annual meetings that are important for the movement itself, magazines and so on.
I think the work done by organizations like Animal Think Tank or Animal Ask, or Social Change Lab, is also very important, in terms of research into cultural change (often linked to political struggles and insitutional change).
Hi Lewis, and thanks for organizing this AMA,
I’m working on the notion of cultural change concerning the animal issue. It seems to me that you don’t address this point in your reflections, and if I’m not mistaken, OP doesn’t fund any cultural struggle organizations.
However, it seems to me extremely difficult to achieve the profound advances demanded by the situation for farmed or fished animals without challenging the extreme speciesist ideology of our civilization. And if we consider the fate of wild animals, the prospects are dizzying: they are infinitely numerous, and their massively terrible situation (cf. https://wildanimalsuffering.org/) has persisted since sentience appeared on Earth, and could continue for another 600 million years if we do nothing. We could almost call it an S-risk, except it’s not a risk, it’s a reality that has always existed and could last forever. So there’s a lot at stake if humans can help them one day. But that seems hard to imagine unless we move toward a sentientist, non-speciesist civilization, an orientation we can hardly imagine without a major cultural revolution.
It therefore seems to me very important, not to say crucial, both from the medium-term perspective of abolishing animal exploitation, and from the long-term perspective of supporting sentient beings on the planet, to work towards structuring and developing a large-scale pro-sentient cultural effort (on the scale of, for example, the Enlightenment philosophers in the 18th century or the French anticlericals in the 19th century).
If we consider that the suffering involved is almost infinite, it seems to me that cultural struggle should be given greater importance (yes, I know that such an argument is hardly discriminatory and could just as well be used to promote veganism, for example! I’d like to make it clear that I want to distinguish cultural struggle from individual education or awareness-raising alone, also for reasons of effectiveness, since the former plays out on a societal scale and relies on methods that are not generally the same. More on this distinction here).
Anyway, my question is: are you and OP also thinking about this issue, and if so, what conclusions are you coming to, and by what means? If you don’t see sufficient interest in directing significant sums towards this type of intervention, why not?
The refusal to use the word ‘vegan’ lies at the heart of certain activist practices in France, whether in the movement for the abolition of meat (which has become the Marches for the Closing down of all Slaughterhouses), or in the World Day for the End of Speciesism or the World Day for the End of Fishing (and Fish Farming):
the aim of these events is precisely to convey to the target audience (the activist movement itself!) the need to adopt a systemic perspective, rather than an inter-individual or individual-centred one.
A perspective of social transformation and political advocacy, rather than conversion; a perspective that moves away from appeals to virtue to focus on the demand for justice, and which, to that end, welcomes everyone, including those who do not change their personal behaviour.
You will not find the word ‘vegan’ on the following websites/events:
htpps://end-of-speciesism.org
https://end-of-fisihing.org
https://meatabolition.org
https://stopabattoirs.org
Meat Abolition Movement: https://www.facebook.com/meat.abolition/
And you can read some interesting theoretical critiques of the vegan approach (the strategy of vegetarian or vegan proselytising) here:
Booklet Change Society for the Animals: Becoming a Social Movement
And this very recent talk: Do vegans harm the animal rights movement?