Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era

Metadata

• Author: Sarat Colling
• Full Title: Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era
• Type:
• Tags: #planet #priority
• URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/104712866

Highlights

• Pliny the Elder reports that in 55 bce, for the consecration of the temple of Venus Victrix, the newly elected consul, Pompey, organized two venationes a day for fi ve days.9 On this occasion, he exhibited various “exotic” animal species, including lions, elephants, panthers, and Ethiopian monkeys, as well as an Indian rhino and a lynx, as a parade of his triumphs in the east. During one of the gruesome shows, Gaetuli hunters were equipped with javelins to slaughter about twenty elephants.10 One of the elephants, who had been pierced several times on her legs, charged the hunters and threw them into the air. Another elephant was killed with a shot of a javelin that struck under her eye. Th e spectators, although typically accustomed to the bloodthirst of the shows, most likely had never seen these gigantic animals and were stunned by the sight of this show. Th e elephants constantly tried to escape, but the arena was enclosed by iron bars, and the hunters forced them, with much struggle, back to the center of the theater. Realizing that there was no hope of escape, it is reported that the elephants suddenly directed a plea for compassion to the crowd. Th e tremendous trumpeting of pain and despair together with the attempted escapes frightened the people so much that Plutarch described the show as terrifying. Perhaps interpret- ing the reaction of the elephants as prayers to the gods or curses towards Pompey, the spectators identifi ed with the plight of the elephants. Th ey leaped to their feet in tears and demanded an end to the show. As Cassius Dio wrote of the event: (View Highlight)
• Th e Classical Greece period provides early records of another occurrence that illuminates animals’ agency: the practice of putting animals on trial. Th ere are limited records about the animal trials during this time, but according to several Greek writers, including Aristotle, they took place in the Prytaneum at Athens.17 It wasn’t until the Middle Ages (500–1400) that we fi nd more detailed recordings of animal trials in European countries. While the trials in Clas- sical Greece likely did not address premeditation of the “crimes,” the medieval trials were oft en concerned with premeditation on the part of the animal defendants, a recognition that acknowl- edged their free will and moral agency. (View Highlight)
• Nearly every country in Europe held animal trials during this period, in either the secular or the church courts.18 A wide variety of species, from dogs to swallows, from cows to weevils, and from dolphins to eels, were put on trial because they had, presumably, broken laws with calculation and intention. Oft en the off ending actions ... were forms of resistance, such as retaliating or escaping. For instance, in 1314, a bull escaped from a farm and ran onto a busy road where he attacked and killed a man. Had this occurred in modern times, the bull would probably have been shot to death on the spot. But this was the fourteenth century. Th e bull was imprisoned, tried in a court of law, and then, fi nally, he was sentenced to death by hanging.
• On one level, they were an acknowledgment of animals’ sentience (the ability to feel) and agency (the capacity to make choices and to act upon them). St. Clair discusses this phenomenon, noting that the trials refl ected a radical openness to the notion of an- imal consciousness. (View Highlight)
• When nobody would take the rebellious elephant, she was sentenced to death. On January 4, 1903, in a gruesome spectacle that was fi lmed for Th omas Edison’s short movie Electrocut- ing an Elephant, Topsy was electrocuted in front of approximately 1,500 spectators on Coney Island. At the dawn of industrialization, the execution doubled as an experiment on electricity as a method of killing (preceded by the electrocution of hundreds of stray cats and dogs in New Jersey during the 1880s).38 (View Highlight)
• Could Animal Farm be, to some degree, about the farmed animals themselves? Perhaps Orwell recognized animal resistance but knew that an animal allegory would be more palatable for his audience. Orwell clearly understood animals’ unjust domination and exploitation by humans under capitalism , exemplifi ed by the following passage: “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of the animals. He sets them to work, he gives them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. (View Highlight)
• Borders cut through the lives of many species in the wild who are trying to complete their life cycles or to live in the places they have inhabited for generations. For some, moving through the landscape is essential. Humans impede these movements. Roads are built through animals’ habitats, and many species are killed when trying to cross them. Salmon and other freshwater fi shes die painful deaths while trying to swim through or under hydroelectric dams. Buildings, power-line corridors, and pipelines also prove disastrous. (View Highlight)
• 9 Like speciesism, racism invokes a human-animal hierarchy. Maneesha Deckha explains that both “race thinking” and “species thinking” are based on the hierarchies of “human,” “subhu- man,” and “nonhuman.” At the top of the species and racial hierarchy is the fi gure that Aph Ko and Syl Ko refer to as the “master being.” (View Highlight)
• Sam, Molly B, and other runaway animals are oft en viewed as individuals, with lives of inher- ent value, yet countless other animals live their lives in captivity and are sent to slaughterhouses every day, without public outcry. Th is disconnect demonstrates that specifi city works to enable empathy. Distancing strategies protect corporations by ensuring the continued exploitation of those who become statistics, not subjects. (View Highlight)
• While the domestication of dogs may have initially been collaborative, domestication has primarily entailed taming, controlling, and suppressing animal resistance. Animals domesticated for food, clothing, entertainment, and other purposes rebelled against captivity. Humans worked hard to control the animals they dominated—a violent process. It might seem shocking or ex- treme to say that domestication is violence, but most domestication of animals has been coercive. Nibert off ers the alternative term domesecration to refer to this process, refl ecting that other animals have been desecrated through domestication since the dawn of agricultural society.6 (View Highlight)
• Th e most resistant animals were usually the fi rst to be killed. Humans weeded out the resistant genes by favoring characteristics of complacency and compliance. Over centuries, the foremost aggressive traits receded, and the descendants were typically more submissive than their rowdier ancestors. (View Highlight)