Carol J. Adams - Neither Man Nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals

Neither Mannor Beast SELECTED TITLES IN THE BLOOMSBURY REVELATIONS SERIES The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams Aesthetic Theory, Theodor W. Adorno Being and Event, Alain Badiou Logics of Worlds, Alain Badiou The Language of Fashion, Roland Barthes The Intelligence of Evil, Jean Baudrillard Key Writings, Henri Bergson Roots for Radicals, Edward T. Chambers Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel DeLanda A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Michael Dummett Marxs Concept of Man, Erich Fromm Truth and Method, Hans Georg Gadamer All Men Are Brothers, Mohandas K. Gandhi Violence and the Sacred, Ren Girard The Three Ecologies, Flix Guattari The Essence of Truth, Martin Heidegger Eclipse of Reason, Max Horkheimer Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre Libidinal Economy, Jean-Franois Lyotard Cant We Make Moral Judgements? , Mary Midgley Time for Revolution, Antonio Negri The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancire Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure Understanding Music, Roger Scruton What is Art? , Leo Tolstoy Interrogating the Real, Slavoj iek Some titles are not available in North America. Neither Mannor Beast Feminism and the Defense of Animals Carol J. Neither Man nor Beast Feminism and the Defense of Animals Carol J.

Adams Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON OXFORD NEW YORK NEW DELHI SY DN EY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.comBLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Originally published by the Continuum Publishing Company, 1994 Bloomsbury Revelations edition first published 2018 Carol J. Adams, 1994, 2018 Preface to Bloomsbury Revelations edition Carol J. Adams, 2018 Carol J. Adams has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: PB: 978-1-3500-4020-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-4022-9 eBook: 978-1-3500-4021-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Bloomsbury Revelations Series design by Clare Turner, clareturner.co.uk Cover image Shutterstock/TDway Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters. In memory of my parents Muriel Kathryn Stang Adams and Lee Towne Adams gifted teachers of many topics, one lesson And then, occasional y, when [Blue, the horse] came up for apples, or I took apples to him, he looked at me.

It was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human, I almost laughed (I felt too sad to cry) to think there are people who do not know that animals suffer. People like me who have forgotten, and daily forget, all that animals try to tell us. Everything you do to us will happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours. We are one lesson is essential y it, I think. There are those who never once have even considered animals rights: those who have been taught that animals actual y want to be used and abused by us, as small children love to be frightened, or women love to be mutilated and raped.... They are the great-grandchildren of those who honestly thought, because someone taught them this: Women cant think, and niggers cant faint.

But most disturbing of al , in Blues large brown eyes was a new look, more painful than the look of despair: the look of disgust with human beings, with life; the look of hatred. And it was odd what the look of hatred did. It gave him, for the first time, the look of a beast. And what that meant was that he had put up a barrier within to protect himself from further violence; all the apples in the world wouldnt change that fact. And so Blue remained, a beautiful part of our landscape, very peaceful to look at from the window, white against the grass. Once a friend came to visit and said, looking out on the soothing view: And it would have to be a white horse; the very image of freedom.

And I thought, yes, the animals are forced to become for us merely images of what they once so beautiful y expressed. And we are used to drinking milk from containers showing contented cows, whose real lives we want to hear nothing about, eating eggs and drumsticks from happy hens, and munching hamburgers advertised by bul s of integrity who seem to command their fate. As we talked of freedom and justice one day for al , we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out. Alice Walker, Am I Blue? 1986 viii ContentsContents x Illustrations xii xiii Greek Moothology, California, March 2016, photograph by Mark Hawthorne.

At a time when certain patriarchal values are making a comeback, as they invariably do during periods of conflict and stress, women must be staunch in refusing their time-honored role as victims, or mere supporters, of men. It is time to rethink the bases of our position and strengthen them for the fight ahead. As a feminist, I fear this moments overt reversion to the most blatant forms of patriarchy, a great moment for so-called real men to assert their sinister dominance over others women, gays, the artistic or the sensitivethe return of the barely repressed. Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Thirty Years After (2006) A California bil board advertisement for a Greek yogurt product called Clover appeared in 2016. It depicts a hoofed cow standing on a shel , with flowing reddish-auburn hair covering her genital area. Waves of milk lap against Clover yogurt containers positioned on either side of the cow.

Greek Moothology, the bil board announces. The advertisement recal s Botticellis The Birth of Venus (the archetypal image of Western female beauty) except that Botticellis Venus has breasts; the bovine has none. No mammary glands, breasts, uddersnothing conveys the very reproductive organ from which the advertised yogurt is derived. While the cows function is thus rendered absent, what is made present is a hybrid femaleness. She is a new example of the image on the original publication of this book; she, too, is neither man nor beast. As the Bloomsbury Revelations cover reminds us, sheand her daysare numbered.

I am honored that Neither Man nor Beast has been selected to enter Bloomsburys Revelations series. It is sobering to re-encounter ones work of almost a quarter of a century earlier. Rereading the essays that make up the book, I register the optimism and energy that were their sources. Elsewhere I have said it is difficult to argue with a cultures mythology, and yet that Preface to the