Sanctuary, 2020

Scope Contemporary Research Topics Art & Design, 19. 7-15., 2020

This article investigates some of the questions, thoughts, and digressions prompted by the video installation artwork 'Emergence' that disarticulates an animal exploitation film from the early years of the twentieth century. Through Aristotelian and Lacanian lenses, it considers the complex, and seemingly insatiable, nature of human desire and its role in the environmental collapse that we see playing out before us.

European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics newsletter, 2021

June, 2023

This paper was given at "The Church and Animals: Christian Perspectives on Farm Animals" at Centre Sèvres - Paris Facultés Jésuites in June 2023. This was previously published as an earlier work with Fraternité pour le Respect Animal, available at https://fra-respect-animal.org/concern-for-animals-is-still-missing-in-catholic-social-teaching-ruby-r-alemu.

This French literature survey will cover movements in French and Francophone literature, culture and thought from the Middle Ages to the present through the thematic lens of the animal. From medieval werewolves and moral-political fables to contemporary graphic novels and the animal rights movement, we will study stories, poems, plays and art that ask us to consider humanity’s animal nature, relationships between humans and animals, and the ethics of those relationships, from literary and artistic as well as scientific and philosophical perspectives.

Chapter Five of What Animals Mean in the Fictions of Modernity: "With remarkable suddenness, this faith in the boundlessness of non-human nature loses authority in the second half of the twentieth century and is replaced by ubiquitous images of a diminished and fragile world. Recent human–animal narratives concentrate on claustrophobic and denaturalized environments, within which animal life – including that of the human animal – is captive and threatened. Often the entire planet appears as an exhausted Crusoe’s Island, a prison rather than a defended enclosure, at risk from nature’s depletion rather than its wild superabun-dance, from over-cultivation rather than lack of cultivation. Alternatively the natural world becomes a Lilliput, wherein Western modernity’s appetite seems as prodigiously unsustainable, its waste discharge as voluminous, its ecological footprint as destructive as that of a gargantuan Gulliver. Or, most commonly of all, writers imagine the globe as a vast scientific experiment, a worldwide workshop of filthy creation, as lethally out of control as Frankenstein’s Creature."

Artforum 62:6 (February 2024): 86-93, 128.

This is a commencing fragment of my book that appeared in 2017: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/animal-narratives-and-culture

Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 2014

ABSTRACT: Contrary to critics and advocates of contractarianism alike, I argue that mutual advantage contractarianism entails rights and protections for animals. In section one I outline the criteria that must be met in order for an individual to qualify for moral rights on the contractarian view. I then introduce an alternative form of ‘rights,’ which I call ‘protectorate status,’ from which an individual can receive protections indirectly. In section two I suggest guidelines for assigning animal rights based on two ways of categorizing animals. On the basis of the categorization according to benefit derived, I argue that animals used for companionship, security, hunting assistance, transportation, entertainment, medical service, nourishment, or clothing will tend to qualify for basic rights against starvation, predation, and disease. On the basis of the categorization according to species, I argue that, on top of the basic rights above, dogs tend to qualify for rights against abuse, and against frivolous medical experimentation, as well as further negotiated rights. Cows have the basic rights against starvation, predation, and disease, but squirrels and bears have no rights. In section three I argue that some animals qualify for protectorate status, which would establish various protections for different animals, but would also generally prohibit cruelty towards animals. RÉSUMÉ : Contrairement à certains critiques ou défenseurs du contractualisme, j’affirme que le contractualisme à avantages réciproques peut assurer droits et protections aux animaux. Dans la première section, je décris les critères que, d’un point de vue contractualiste, un individu doit satisfaire pour pouvoir bénéficier de droits moraux. J’introduis ensuite une autre forme de « droits », que j’appelle « protectorat », qui permet à un individu de bénéficier indirectement de certaines protections. Dans la deuxième section, je propose des directives pour accorder des droits aux animaux en fonction d’un double mode de catégorisation. La première catégorisation serait établie d’après les avantages procurés par l’animal; ainsi les animaux de compagnie, de garde, de chasse, de transport, de divertissement, ou assurant des services de santé, d’alimentation ou d’habillement devraient se voir accorder des droits fondamentaux contre la famine, la prédation et la maladie. Selon la seconde catégorisation, établie d’après l’espèce, les chiens devraient bénéficier de droits les protégeant des mauvais traitements et des expérimentations médicales inutiles, ainsi que d’autres droits négociés. Les vaches jouissent ainsi des droits fondamentaux qui les protègent de la famine, de la prédation et de la maladie, mais les écureuils et les ours n’ont pas de droits. Dans la troisième section, j’explique que certains animaux devraient bénéficier d’un statut de protectorat, qui accorderait des protections diverses à différents animaux, mais qui défendrait de façon générale toute cruauté envers les animaux.