Neither Man nor 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 Félix Guattari Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Michael Dummett Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm Truth and Method, Hans Georg Gadamer All Men Are Brothers, Mohandas K. Gandhi Violence and the Sacred, René Girard The Three Ecologies, Félix Guattari The Essence of Truth, Martin Heidegger Eclipse of Reason, Max Horkheimer Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre Libidinal Economy, Jean-François Lyotard Can’t We Make Moral Judgements?, Mary Midgley Time for Revolution, Antonio Negri The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure Understanding Music, Roger Scruton What is Art?, Leo Tolstoy Interrogating the Real, Slavoj Žižek Some titles are not available in North America. Frontispiece Original cover of Neither Man nor Beast. Neither Man nor Beast Feminism and the Defense of Animals Carol J. Adams Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LONDON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY 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, occasionally, 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 essentially it, I think. There are those who never once have even considered animals’ rights: those who have been taught that animals actually 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 can’t think,” and “niggers can’t faint.” But most disturbing of all, in Blue’s 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 wouldn’t 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 beautifully 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 bulls of integrity who seem to command their fate. As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, 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 Contents Illustrations xi Preface to the Bloomsbury Revelations Edition xv Preface xxxvii Acknowledgments for the Bloomsbury Revelations Edition xlvi Part One Examining the Arrogant Eye 1 1 Eating Animals 3 2 The Arrogant Eye and Animal Experimentation 15 3 Abortion Rights and Animal Rights 32 4 On Beastliness and a Politics of Solidarity 51 Part Two “We Are One Lesson”: Transforming Feminist Theory 69 5 Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals 71 6 The Feminist Traffic in Animals 97 7 Reflections on a Stripping Chimpanzee: On the Need to Integrate Feminism, Animal Defense, and Environmentalism 117