Description
Book SynopsisAn essential read for activists, community organizers, justice scholars, and academic administrators, Critical Animal Studies and Social Justice: Critical Theory, Dismantling Speciesism, and Total Liberation is a collection that combines scholarship and activism in nine ground-breaking and provocative chapters. The book includes contributions from around the world influenced by critical theory, feminism, social justice, political theory, media studies, environmental justice, food justice, disability studies, and Black liberation. By promoting total liberation and liberatory politics, these essays challenge the reader to think about new approaches to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion . The contributors also examine and disrupt many of the exclusionary assumptions and behaviors by those working toward justice and liberation, encouraging the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and actions. They emphasize the direct links between exploitation of animals, the planet, and people, the significance of which we can no longer afford to ignore.
Trade ReviewThis book draws from and continues to push forward the aphorism that diversity is an absolutely crucial concept for ecological, biolocal, and social flourishing which should be celebrated. While contributors center on connections between disability, nonhuman animals, and the environment, no form of oppression or social justice is left out, setting an example for social justice advocates who are not fully inclusive.
-- Nathan Poirier
Powerful, provocative, challenging. Anyone interested in contemporary critical theory and radical social change will benefit from reading this book. Kudos to all the contributors!
-- Jason Del Gandio, Temple University
If you want to exist as a liberated soul on the edge of life-worlds, where animals, minerals, clouds, elements and people all coexist as sacred, read this book. Its intersections take us to another dimension. It’s a force to be reckoned with, wielding a transdisciplinary disruptive energy that gets to the heart of true liberation for all.
-- Lea Lani Kinikini, Salt Lake Community College
Nocella's and George's latest anthology with a diverse group of critical theory scholars around the world provide a liberating pathway forward for abilities liberation, animal liberation, earth liberation and every other form of liberation possible. This is accomplished through employing Nocella's and George's life-affirming methodology of lifting up the voices, ideas and methodologies of grassroots scholar-teacher-activists on the peripheries, on our own terms toward win-win recommendations. I especially appreciate Nocella's and George's full-hearted rejection of stigma, repression, othering and cancel culture which has been devastating to abilities liberation. An exciting, life-affirming and liberating anthology!
-- Daniel Salomon, Portland State University
This powerful and accessible book is a must-have for any scholar, activist, or animal-lover interested in animal liberation and multispecies justice. Anthony Nocella II and Amber George have collected a stunning set of essays which offer global perspectives on critical animal studies in both theory and praxis. Read it and then read it again.
-- S. Marek Muller
As one traumatized by the cruelty to animals I was forced to experience as a child growing up on a “family farm” in the 1940s and 50s, I know from painful personal experience how animal exploitation harms not only our animal cousins, but all of us. We need to understand how and why, and this book is a great help. It needs to be read by all who are concerned about the living world and the human-made conflicts in which we are all embroiled, or I should say victimized.
-- Jim Mason
A Critical Animal Studies Reader makes an impressive contribution to the literature. The content is excellent: Nocella and George deserve great credit for successfully bringing together the ideas and lived experiences of some of the most important global scholar-activists writing at this time.
-- Richard J. White, Sheffield Hallam University, Reader in Economic Geography, Former Editor of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies
A must read book for working toward ending speciesism and for social justice for all. This scholarly text is a radical critique of oppression and domination of the ecological world. This profound total liberation book is one of the most important books within the animal rights movement, edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Amber E. George.
-- Alisha Page, Save the Kids
Table of ContentsIntroduction: From Fascism to Total Liberation: Getting to Know What You Think You Know Amber E. George and Anthony J. Nocella II
Chapter One: Towards the Footsteps of Nimrod: Positive Animal Representation in Saki’s Short Fiction by Samantha Orsulak
Chapter Two: Making No Appeal to the State: Ending Animal Abuse through Total Liberation and Direct Action by Will Boisseau
Chapter Three: The Lamb with Ear Tag #8710: Suffering as “Good Welfare” in Animal Science by Nathan Poirier
Chapter Four: On the Dharma of Critical Animal Studies: Animal Spirituality and Total Liberation by Michael Allen and Erica Von Essen
Chapter Five: Teaching Public Activism in the Humanities: Navigating a Classroom Climate in Crisis by Jessica Holmes
Chapter Six: The Preservation of Injustice: Human Supremacy, Domination, and Privilege
by Paislee House and Amanda R. Williams
Chapter Seven: Manufacturing the Line Between Brutality and Best Practice in the Animal-Industrial Complex by Ellyse Winter
Chapter Eight: Animal Rescue on Facebook: About the Rescuer or the Rescued? by Tatjana Marjanovic
Chapter Nine: Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Notion of Marginalization in Bengali Literature by Swatilekha Maity
