The language of animal oppression

September 7, 2013 by Steve C 8 Comments

I’m finally getting some rest and relaxation (and by ‘rest and relaxation’, I mean ‘job hunting’) after three days of the MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory conference. I co-convened a workshop at the conference, on ‘The Political Turn in Animal Rights’ – 12 really good papers from some top academics and brilliant students. Two things really struck me during the conference.

The first was the huge influence Donaldson and Kymlicka’s book, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights has had on the field. Although many academics were doing political theory and animal rights for many years before the book, it’s really provoked a lot of research and wider engagement.

The second came as a result of a paper by Les Mitchell from Fort Hare, SA. Les drew our attention to the way in which language contributes to injustice towards non-human animals by directing our thought and expression. Two particular modes of expression were telling: the way we refer to animals by adjectives that refer to their purpose, and the use of mass nouns to remove individuality and identity from an animal. For example, we refer to chickens as ‘broiler hens’ or ‘layers’, to cows as ‘beef cattle,’ ‘dairy cows,’ ‘veal calves’. By using these adjectives we reinforce assumptions and cultural practices with an implication that the purpose or telos of a non-human animal is to be used by us. Additionally, mass nouns, nouns that do not permit counting as individual units,: beef, lamb, meat, pork etc., all divorce the product of the farming/meat industry from the individual life that was taken to provide it. When speak of chicken wing, beef rib, leg of lamb rather than ‘the wing of a chicken,’ ‘lamb’s leg,’ ‘cow’s rib’ it may make it easier to divorce the contents of our dinner from the individual that suffered and died to provide us with our gustatory pleasure.

One example Les gave really struck me; it concerned the expressions we use to discuss pets. There’s been a trend in animal rights literature and animal activism to refer to pets as ‘companion animals’. A pet is property, it exists as an instrument to provide its owner with benefits, but a companion animal is something different, something more. However, Les pointed out that even this way of referring to an animal makes us think that its existence is directed towards the purpose of being our companion. If we speak of ‘animal companions’ rather than ‘companion animals’ we are describing a friend rather than an object.

Of course you might be forgiven, reading this post, for being lulled into making the common mental distinction between humans and animals, forgetting for a moment that there is no such distinction (which is why scholars in my field try to refer to non-human animals or to ‘humans and other animals’).

Les’ challenge to our use of language in order to create a shift in perspective got me thinking, I thought it worth sharing.