Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture PDF
Preview Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture
Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture Towards a Vegan Theory Edited by Emelia Quinn Benjamin Westwood Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature Series Editors Susan McHugh English Department University of New England Biddeford, ME, USA Robert McKay School of English University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK John Miller School of English University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK Various academic disciplines can now be found in the process of executing an ‘animal turn’, questioning the ethical and philosophical grounds of human exceptionalism by taking seriously the nonhuman animal presences that haunt the margins of history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and literary studies. Such work is characterised by a series of broad, cross- disciplinary questions. How might we rethink and problematise the sepa- ration of the human from other animals? What are the ethical and political stakes of our relationships with other species? How might we locate and understand the agency of animals in human cultures? This series publishes work that looks, specifically, at the implications of the ‘animal turn’ for the field of English Studies. Language is often thought of as the key marker of humanity’s difference from other species; animals may have codes, calls or songs, but humans have a mode of communication of a wholly other order. The primary motivation is to muddy this assumption and to animalise the canons of English Literature by rethinking representations of animals and interspecies encounter. Whereas animals are conventionally read as objects of fable, allegory or metaphor (and as signs of specifically human concerns), this series significantly extends the new insights of inter- disciplinary animal studies by tracing the engagement of such figuration with the material lives of animals. It examines textual cultures as variously embody- ing a debt to or an intimacy with animals and advances understanding of how the aesthetic engagements of literary arts have always done more than simply illustrate natural history. We publish studies of the representation of animals in literary texts from the Middle Ages to the present and with refer- ence to the discipline’s key thematic concerns, genres and critical methods. The series focuses on literary prose and poetry, while also accommodating related discussion of the full range of materials and texts and contexts (from theatre and film to fine art, journalism, the law, popular writing and other cultural ephemera) with which English studies now engages. Series Board: Karl Steel (Brooklyn College) Erica Fudge (Strathclyde) Kevin Hutchings (UNBC) Philip Armstrong (Canterbury) Carrie Rohman (Lafayette) Wendy Woodward (Western Cape) More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14649 Emelia Quinn • Benjamin Westwood Editors Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture Towards a Vegan Theory Editors Emelia Quinn Benjamin Westwood Wolfson College Wadham College University of Oxford University of Oxford Oxford, UK Oxford, UK Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature ISBN 978-3-319-73379-1 ISBN 978-3-319-73380-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73380-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934683 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Richard Packwood / Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland A cknowledgments This collection grew out of the Towards a Vegan Theory conference that we organized at the University of Oxford in May 2016. Having both spoken at a panel at the University of York in early 2014, organized by Professor Jason Edwards, on what seemed like the admittedly niche field of vegan theory, our 2016 call for papers tentatively proposed contributions from other interested scholars hoping to debate what kind of place veganism and/or “the vegan” should occupy in our theorizations of human–animal relations, animal studies, and the humanities in general. We suggested that veganism, as an identity-category based on choice and response, asks dif- ficult questions both of its own coherence, and of identitarian politics and cultural theory more broadly. It therefore invites a rethinking of philo- sophical definitions of humans as the only animal that can respond, open- ing new ways of conceptualizing or challenging the human/animal binary. We asked that proposals engaged with veganism not just as a diet or life- style, but as a set of cognitive coordinates that might alter current critical- theoretical practices, and that explored what a vegan theory might look, read, or sound like, and its place in the humanities. This collection represents essays from a selection of speakers from the conference, with two further essays solicited from leading scholars work- ing at the border of animal studies and vegan theory. Of particular interest at the conference were the recurring themes that emerged throughout the day; less the wilful optimism and activist agendas one might have expected, but the messier complications of inconsistency, contradiction, failure, and emotion and their place in vegan theory. This collection gathers up and extends some of these concerns. v vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is with deep gratitude that we thank all who attended, presented at, or offered their support in the build-up to the conference, which proved to be a thoroughly productive coming together of international scholars. We are indebted to The Oxford Research Centre in Humanities (TORCH) (with special thanks to John Miles) and the UK Vegan Society: generous funding from these two bodies made the conference possible. Thanks also to the hospitality, and first venture into vegan catering, of Wolfson College, Oxford. Financial support made the conference and this book possible, but without the passion and enthusiasm of Jason Edwards, neither would have happened. We thank him for his endless support and encouragement as supervisor, mentor, and friend. We have both benefited profoundly from his generosity and intellectual agility. Thanks also to Angus Brown and Daniel Ibrahim-Abdalla for the generous and insightful comments they offered on the introduction to this collection. Emelia would like to thank her mother, Jane, and stepdad, Simon, whose unconditional love, support, and financial assistance have been piv- otal to any and all successes in life. She is indebted to the community of scholars working at the University of York and its Centre for Modern Studies, where her interest in veganism’s relation to theoretical enquiry underwent invaluable development. Thanks are also due to the generous funding of the Wolfson Foundation and the intellectual encouragement offered by Professor Ankhi Mukherjee, which have made undertaking a vegan theory project at Oxford possible. And thanks to Laura Davies, who spent five patient years reminding her that there is a world beyond academia. Ben owes especial debts of gratitude to his parents, Bob and Steve, who dog-sat during the conference, read parts of the manuscript, and cared about how it was going; to Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, who offered insightful and encouraging thoughts on his essay, and who has shaped his thinking and writing; to Angus Brown, for 3 years of stimulating and clari- fying conversations about this project (and others); to Ruby, who reminds him daily, and sometimes surprisingly, that animals are subjects of a life. Lastly, to Katharine, who taught him the most basic principle of this book: that caring entails thinking. c ontents Introduction: Thinking Through Veganism 1 Emelia Quinn and Benjamin Westwood Part I Politics 25 Vegans in the Interregnum: The Cultural Moment of an Enmeshed Theory 27 Laura Wright Part II Visual Culture 55 Remnants: The Witness and the Animal 57 Sara Salih The Vegan Viewer in the Circum-Polar World; Or, J. H. Wheldon’s The Diana and Chase in the Arctic (1857) 79 Jason Edwards Trojan Horses 107 Tom Tyler vii viii CONTENTS Vegan Cinema 125 Anat Pick Part III Literature 147 Monstrous Vegan Narratives: Margaret Atwood’s Hideous Progeny 149 Emelia Quinn On Refusal 175 Benjamin Westwood The Unpacking Plant: Gleaning the Lexicons of Lean Culture 199 Natalie Joelle Part IV Definitions 223 Ethical Veganism as Protected Identity: Constructing a Creed Under Human Rights Law 225 Allison Covey A Vegan Form of Life 249 Robert McKay Conclusion 273 Emelia Quinn and Benjamin Westwood Index 281 n c otes on ontributors Allison Covey is a PhD candidate in Theology at the University of Toronto. Her work explores the construction, performance, and codifica- tion of religious identity. She is interested in the way the religious/secular divide is legislated in the drafting and enforcement of human rights law and especially the routes those espousing non-traditional identities take to secure for themselves legal protections. Jason Edwards is a Professor of Art History at the University of York, where he works primarily on British art in its global geopolitical and envi- ronmental contexts across the long nineteenth century. He is the author of Alfred Gilbert’s Aestheticism (Routledge, 2006) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Routledge, 2009), as well as the co-editor of collections on Sedgwick as a poet, Victorian sculpture in its global contexts, nineteenth- century interiors, homoeroticism in late Victorian Britain, and surrealist artist Joseph Cornell. Jason works across the fields of queer and vegan theory, as well as at their intersections. Natalie Joelle is writing a transdisciplinary study of gleaning and lean culture at Birkbeck, University of London, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has published critical and creative work on Georges Seurat’s drawing “The Gleaner,” The Book of Ruth, Jean- Francois Millet’s The Gleaners and Glean Cereal Herbicide, and her forth- coming writing includes considerations of gleaning in the work of Peter Larkin, Jim Crace’s novel Harvest, and agrotechnological innovations. Natalie is currently a Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of ix
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