Toward a Postcolonial, Posthumanist

Feminist Theory: Centralizing Race and

Culture in Feminist Work on Nonhuman
Animals
MANEESHA DECKHA

Posthumanist feminist theory has been instrumental in demonstrating the salience of

gender and sexism in structuring humananimal relationships and in revealing the
connections between the oppression of women and of nonhuman animals. Despite the
richness of feminist posthumanist theorizations it has been suggested that their influence in contemporary animal ethics has been muted. This marginalization of feminist
workhere, in its posthumanist versionis a systemic issue within theory and needs
to be remedied. At the same time, the limits of posthumanist feminist theory must
also be addressed. Although posthumanist feminist theory has generated a sophisticated
body of work analyzing how gendered and sexist discourses and practices subordinate
women and animals alike, its imprint in producing intersectional analyses of animal
issues is considerably weaker. This leaves theorists vulnerable to charges of essentialism, ethnocentrism, and elitism despite best intentions to avoid such effects and
despite commitments to uproot all forms of oppression. Gender-focused accounts also
preclude understanding of the importance of race and culture in structuring speciesbased oppression. To counter these undesirable pragmatic and conceptual developments, posthumanist feminist theory needs to engender feminist accounts that centralize the structural axes of race and culture.

The recent rise in critical academic engagement with the ethical status of
animals and species as a site of social difference owes much to past decades
of feminist theorization. Feminist theory aimed at questioning the abject cultural,
moral, and legal status of animals, building upon foundational ecofeminist work
in this regard linking the subordination of women and nature, has labored to
Hypatia vol. 27, no. 3 (Summer 2012) by Hypatia, Inc.

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show the similarities in the structures and discourses between human and animal
oppressions (Gaard 2011). This type of feminist animal theory, which some refer
to as vegetarian ecofeminism, argues that those feminists and other social justice theorists who have not yet placed animals into their ethical horizons should
do so due to these continuities (Gaard 2002). A primary component of this type
of argumentation points to the critical role played by Cartesian dualistic norms
and ways of thinking, which have been instrumental in structuring hierarchies
and oppressions among human groups, in justifying the human subjugation and
oppression of animals. Also emphasized as a point of connection between posthumanist theory and critical yet humanist theories is the need to deconstruct
purportedly biological differences and naturalized bodies as social constructions.
A further prominent imperative is to apply an ethic of care to animals and to
value emotionally compassionate responses to animals suffering as appropriate
guides for ethical judgment (Adams and Donovan 1995; 1996; Gaard 2002,
Donovan and Adams 2007; Rudy 2011).
Such feminist contributions were and remain a stark departure from prevailing liberal animal ethics theories both in their utilitarian and deontological
forms advanced by theorists such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan (Singer 1975;
Regan 1983). The moral philosophy of Singer, Regan, and other male contemporaries in the field articulated reason-based arguments that hinged primarily on
the premises of correspondence and consistency for their persuasiveness: to the
extent that animals were similar to human beings given capacities of suffering,
sentience, cognition, and/or awareness (correspondence), they must be included
in our moral horizons lest we appear discriminatory or arbitrary (consistency).
The antispeciesist arguments for animal equality and liberation were thus
grounded in liberal, rule-based sameness logic and premises that privileged reason in moral valuation and judgment; inherent in this approach was the disavowal of care theory and emotions as morally salient either as markers of who
counted as moral patients or as compasses for moral agents (Donovan and
Adams 2007, 46).
The vegetarian ecofeminist scholarship of authors such as Carol Adams and
Josephine Donovan pointed to the masculinist orientation of this logic and its
central premises. They noted the concerns with arguing for moral consideration
for animals by valuing sameness rather than difference, as well as the disconnect
in elevating the capacity for reason, the presumed absence of which in animals
has long been a primary source of justification for their exploitation and moral
disregard. Instead, Adams and Donovan integrated insights from cultural feminist
theory to demonstrate, along with other criticisms of masculinist animal ethics,
the value of emotions and of attending to context in crafting ethical responses
(Adams and Donovan 1996). An approach that recuperates emotion from its traditionally abject status in Cartesian thinking is especially critical to reforming
the treatment of animals, the authors have argued, since many advocates are first

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stimulated to question hegemonic Western views about animals through emotional responses to their suffering. Moreover, the exclusion of the emotional
response is a major reason why animal abuse and exploitation continue (Donovan and Adams 2007, 6). Adams and Donovan have also emphasized how the
disparagement of emotions in relation to reason has operated as a signature feature in liberal discourses seeking to justify both womens and animals subordination (16). As Helena Pedersen notes, (t)he links between anthropocentric and
androcentric worldviews are thus made explicit in ecofeminist thought (Pedersen 2010, 6).
Given the masculinist orientation of mainstream or liberal animal ethics
and the resort to cultural feminism to demonstrate its inadequacies, it is understandable why, despite the feminist focus on the connections among and the
nature of interrelated oppressions, gender has been the central analytic in vegetarian ecofeminist accounts. Interrogations of the stigmatized associations among
women, animals, and nature have focused primarily on sexist ideologies and binary understandings of sex and gender. Although this type of posthumanist feminist scholarship has identified an underlying logic of domination guiding animal
oppression that connects this oppression to other forms of oppression against
humans, such theorizations typically discuss women as an undifferentiated group
and gender as the primary unit by which to analyze power relations. Some posthumanist feminist work centrally integrates other axes of difference (Haraway
1989; Gaard 1997; Gruen 2001; Fox 2005; Hird 2006; Bailey 2007; Pedersen
2010), but this has been the exception rather than the norm. It is more common
for feminist writing on animals to touch on other points of difference or to refer
to these dimensions of injustice in a secondary way; in these accounts, gender
still plays the starring role. Curiously, then, despite its cutting-edge focus on
animals, posthumanist feminist theory is replicating the problematic and now
discredited premises of second-wave feminist theorizing in addressing animal suffering by implicitly prioritizing gender while hoping and claiming to address
womens and animals oppression in a way that stresses context, complexity, and
multiple differences. The paradox is evident. The Universal Woman of white,
Western feminist theory has made more than a problematic appearance within
posthumanist feminist theorizing (Dowd and Jacobs 2003, 11)she is its keynote
speaker despite the fact that most organizers did not specifically invite her and
are keenly aware of the difficulties she embodies.
Why is her presence so persistent? Arguably, it may be attributed to the
ingrained legacy of dyadic thinking in Western epistemologies, the challenges
posed by the complexity intersectionality demands, and the prominence of white
Western women within posthumanist feminist theory. I sidestep the question of
why the field has developed this way in order to explore the equally pressing
question of what the outcome of this gender-concentrated development is for
feminist animal analyses. Specifically, I canvass the impoverishment that occurs

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when such posthumanist feminist analyses prioritize the genderspecies dyad at

the expense of other differences. I argue that feminist work on animals has to
become more intersectional and, in particular, to centralize the dynamics of race
and culture within their gender work on animals. I say more intersectional as
it is important to recognize that posthumanist feminist writing about animals is
always already intersectional to the extent that its purposes are to examine the
species-related dimensions of oppression against women and the gender-related
dimensions of oppression against animals. At the same time, the limitations of
the genderspecies dyad in responding to the postcolonial and racialized manifestations of animal practices should be acknowledged.
My goal is to demonstrate how a more robust intersectional framework in
posthumanist feminist writing, defined as one that at least centrally integrates
issues of race and cultural difference, will benefit posthumanist feminist theory
on a conceptual and practical level. To be clear, although race and culture are
related concepts, it is crucial to recall their distinctiveness. By attending to race,
I am calling for a type of feminist critical inquiry that considers how the social
forces that code and privilege whiteness inform questions related to the human/
animal divide. An attention to culture is meant to bring awareness of how colonial logics fortifying a reified Western/non-Western binary and civilizational discourses positioning Western culture as superior to non-Western cultures
continue to be formative in current debates/ideas about human nature and
humananimal relationships (Anderson 2007, 4).
To intersectional theorists, this move may need no argumentit is immediately perceived as obvious. As is well documented in feminist literature, such
theorists have insisted upon the need to understand social forces of gender, race,
class, ability, age, sexual orientation, and so on, commonly treated as discrete, as
mutually brought into being and equally relevant to analyses of social phenomena (hooks 1984; Lorde 1984; McClintock 1995; Razack 1998; Crenshaw
1999).1 An intersectional type of orientation signals a theoretical approach
against a singular or additive framework for difference and instead seeks to
describe, explain, and critique the ways in which processes of differentiation
dynamically function through one another and enable each other (Dhamoon
2011, 232). Although the theorys acceptance is widespread within feminism as a
theoretical commitment, the practice of it may be absent or incomplete. The
argument is thus directed at those who are not yet convinced about the benefits
of an intersectional analysis or who believe that feminist posthumanist interventions are already sufficiently intersectional with their critiques.
There are several reasons for posthumanist feminist theory to move in a more
intersectional direction that centralizes race and culture. A first set of reasons
focuses on the pragmatic pressures the scholarship has encountered due to its real
and imagined exclusionary premises. This part of the article relates to the praxis
of feminist work on animals and the preferred signals those working in the area

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wish to send to the broader social justice community through the theoretical
frameworks conceptual premises and commitments. A second set of reasons
implicates the centrality of postcolonial and racialized dynamics to the animal
question. This part discusses how a more intersectional analysis can better capture the complexity and depth of humananimal power relations and subjectivities. Both sets of reasons are discussed to encourage posthumanist feminists to
prioritize race and culture as grounds of analysis in their work.

PRAGMATIC PRESSURES

RESIDUAL ESSENTIALISM

AND

EXCLUSION

Feminists who work on animals are aware of the need to create alliances with
other social justice-seeking groups (Gaard 2002; Adams 2007a; Bailey 2007). It
thus becomes important in formulating posthumanist feminist theory to consider
how certain discourses or practices will foster, preclude, or impair such connections. One place to start this self-scrutiny is to consider the central premises and
routine stories that a theory/movement tells. Although posthumanist feminist
theory is concerned with many forms of oppression (racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism), its main focus has been sexism and gender relations. By retaining
gender as the primary unit of analysis in relation to understanding social constructions of species difference and in relation to fashioning an ideal ethic for
human engagements with animals, posthumanist feminist theory encourages
(however inadvertently) essentialism.
Essentialism, as we know by now, is a dreaded label in feminist theory that
has been applied vigorously to mainstream Western feminist theory by women of
color and white lesbians over the past few decades (hooks 1984; Lorde 1984;
Anzaldua 1987). Essentialist feminist theorization presumes that gender roles and
sexism sufficiently explain issues affecting womens lives. Other determinants of
social identity, location, and privilege are not seen to be as important or even
relevant. A woman is thus reduced to her gender with other parts of her identity
race, sexual orientation, ability, and so onrelegated to the nonwoman part
of her. The analysis is essentialist as the essence of a woman is seen to be her
gender identity largely unmediated by any other aspect of her social location. In
this framework, the white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class, and otherwise
privileged woman who but for her gender is not adversely affected by social
structures of difference emerges as the quintessential and archetypical woman
(Spelman 1988).
Posthumanist feminist theory has never been this essentialist, although, as
Greta Gaard shows, it has been devastatingly mischaracterized and dismissed

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as such by its critics, including humanist feminists (Gaard 2011, 3539). Its
guiding goal has been to offer an alternative to the one-dimensional focus
and masculinist orientation of mainstream animal ethical theory that analyzes
species difference in isolation from any other analytic. In contrast, posthumanist feminist theory has insisted upon the importance of situating animal
oppression next to gender oppression and of analyzing animal experience
through a gendered species analysis. In doing so, it places at least two axes
of difference in relation to one another. Carol Adamss influential formulation
of the sexspecies framework, whereby interconnections between sexism and
speciesism are made visible, is illustrative of this type of dual analysis (Adams
1990). Further, many posthumanist feminists have connected this sexspecies
system to racism, imperialism, homophobia, socialism, and other issues (Gaard
2011). Animals, then, do not appear unmodified in posthumanist feminist
theoryeven in early accountsin the way that women appeared unmodified
in mainstream Western feminist theory. Yet a residual problem with essentialism ensues from posthumanist feminist theorys reliance on gender as the primary explanatory deconstructive tool to understand the dynamics of human
exploitation of animals at the same time that it acknowledges the importance
of an intersectional analysis. Gender is no doubt salient and is perhaps most
apparent in the industry that exploits the most animalsfactory farming
given the gendered reproductive labor of female animals that the industry
covets, appropriates, and commodifies. But even here it may not be dispositive or operating in an unmodified way.
To some extent, classic posthumanist feminist articulations have recognized
this or have been revised to correct essentialist foci. Since her early work, for
example, Donna Haraway has underscored the workings of race as well as
gender in her analysis of human relationships with animals (Haraway 1989).
Adams has also stressed the importance of race and racism in informing patriarchal logics in an essay revisiting her original articulation of her sexspecies
system (Adams 2007b, 20206). Moreover, Adams has recently highlighted the
ways in which racism, colonialism, and speciesism structure human genocides
and institutional animal-killing (Adams 2007a). Nevertheless, this essay appears
in a recent collection by leading posthumanist feminists that surveys classic
and contemporary contributions in the feminist care tradition for animals,
where references to culture, race, imperialism, colonialism, and racism take second place to gender (Donovan and Adams 2007). Despite greater attention to
race and culture as other points of difference in this collection (Adams 2007a;
Gruen 2007) than in previous ones (Adams and Donovan 1995; 1996), ethicsof-care feminist work on animals and posthumanist feminist theory on animals
in general still seems more at home with cultural and radical feminist
frameworks of sex and gender and their essentialist proclivities (Alcoff 1988)
rather than intersectional ones. Two other recent manuscripts by influential

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533

vegetarian ecofeminists Marti Kheel and Brian Luke also assign a privileged
role to sexism and gender in their theorizations of multiple forms of oppression
(Luke 2007; Kheel 2008).
This form of covert or residual essentialism may be best evinced by Karen
Warrens responses to criticisms of her tour de force Ecofeminist Philosophy
(Warren 2000), a leading ecofeminist text, written after many years of work in
this area. In responding to other ecofeminist critics who wish to push her
politics of alterity further, Warren writes of her work:
Throughout my book I describe and defend interconnections
among the unjustified dominations of women, people of color, the
poor, colonized peoples, nonhuman animals and nature. I
describe these dominated groups as human and nonhuman (or,
earth) Others, where Others refers to those groups that are inferiorized, marginalized, exploited, and dominated within patriarchal
and other oppressive conceptual frameworks, systems, and institutions. While gender is the starting point and lens through which I
explore ways others become Others, my ecofeminist philosophy is
inclusivist and pluralist. (Warren 2002, 42)
Warren is committed to demonstrating how oppressions of different groups,
both human and nonhuman, are linked, especially through the dynamics of the
processes of Othering. As much as Warren intends an inclusive theory, starting
with gender as the main analytic imperils this goal. It misunderstands gender as
ontologically separate from other differences and a priori assigns a secondary role
to the work that other social forces (of race, culture, and otherwise) perform in
these oppressions when their operation may be more formative, both in formulating the particular gendered configurations of the dynamics at issue and in structuring the oppressions. This residual essentialism thus renders the analysis
conceptually incomplete and even inaccurate.
An approach that elevates gender in the way that Warrens does also poses
difficulties for coalitional advocacy. It fortifies the existing perception that ecofeminist theory and feminist work on animals in general is gender-myopic and fundamentally essentialist even when it is not (Gaard 2011). This perception can
be amplified in the eyes of the assessor given the dominant social identity of
those writing in this area: white, Western, middle-class women. There is a whiteness, Westernness, and affluence to academic feminist (and nonfeminist) writing
on animals that is difficult to downplay, so much so that the Journal of Critical
Animal Studies recently published a special issue devoted solely to women of
color authors whom the guest editors described as eerily absent from the burgeoning critical animal studies field (Yarbrough and Thomas 2010, 3). This
demographic reality helps explain the striking replication of second-wave feminist theorys practices of privileging gender within its comparatively emergent

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posthumanist feminist counterpart. It would seem that race and other privileges
are powerful filters even in the presence of intersectional commitments.
Just as mainstream feminist theory has come to accept the anti-essentialism
critique in understanding gender as an interdependent force field, posthumanist
feminist theory would do well to further explore the workings of multiple axes of
difference in constituting our ideas of species and our relationships with animals
so as to avoid the charge of essentialism as well as the perception that this is a
white, Western field. This orientation would not undermine the gendered
insights that have been so formative to understanding how animals are Othered
(for example, that animals are not reducible to their perceived biological species
identity or reproductive capacity, but rather, especially when domesticated/
enslaved by humans and brought or born into relations with us, live lives mediated by our ideas about them and their embodiment). Instead, it would integrate
other constructs of difference, prime among them culture and race, into the analyses. Simply making the gesture to be more inclusive in analyses is a move that
should appeal to those who may feel alienated by the perceived and actual dominant gender analysis because they view the matter as more complicated by racism, colonialism, and so on (Harper 2010). This may help preclude unfair
charges of rampant essentialism and the dismissal of antispeciesist critiques on
this basis.

ETHNOCENTRISM

AND

ELITISM

The concern with essentialism leads to a second reason posthumanist feminists

should make race and culture a priority focus in their critical animal work:
avoiding charges of ethnocentrism and elitism. Part of the majoritarian
response to animal ethics, including those from humanist feminists, has been
to discredit it as an exclusive preoccupation. Perhaps nowhere is this more
prominent than in the realm of food practices. As prominent posthumanist
feminist scholars have noted, there is a growing chorus of criticism that
charges vegetarian and vegan advocates with ethnocentrism/imperialism and
elitism in their attempts to promote an animal-free diet (Bailey 2007; Gruen
2007; Gaard 2011). The ethnocentrism/imperialism charge stems from the perception that antimeat advocates are ignorant of and/or unresponsive toward
non-Western cultures whose traditional diets are animal-based. This critique is
often advanced through the example of subsistence hunting practices of indigenous peoples (Kemmerer 2004, 1516; Deckha 2007, 210211) or other presumed non-Western cultural flesh foods (Kim 2007). The elitism charge
emanates from the fact that in the Western context mass-produced and heavily subsidized animal flesh is often cheaper to buyand thus more accessible
to low-income communitiesthan fruits and vegetables, therefore making

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vegetarianism and veganism really only possible for the white, Western urban
elites who promote their acceptance (Fox 2011).
It is possible to respond to these charges by noting their tenuous and selective perspectives. The elitist and ethnocentric characterization of vegetarianism/veganism obscures the reality that in many parts of the globe, it is more
expensive to lead a nonvegetarian lifestyle than a vegetarian lifestyle, with animal flesh marked as a luxury item or indulgence (Belasco 2006, 8). These
arguments also discount the enormous amounts of plant and land resources
that are required to sustain current Western levels of flesh consumption
(Bittman 2008) and ignore the richness of non-Western flesh-free food traditions and ideologies of nonviolence toward all living beings. Indeed, these
accusations align with the centuries-old majoritarian habit in Western cultures
of deriding vegetarianism and, as it has come more into popular consciousness,
veganism (Brooks 2009; Cole and Morgan 2011). What is different (and
remarkable) today is that flesh-free diets are impugned for purported imperialist
aspirations when they were denounced in the time of British empire-building
as markers of anti-imperial and countercultural allegiance (Gandhi 2006). Further, as Claire Jean Kim argues, arguments that invoke multiculturalist discourse to disparage vegetarianism/veganism and otherwise sanction cruel animal
practices have themselves gone imperial in their disregard for animal otherness, vulnerability, and marginalization (Kim 2007, 234).
Although the above points are available as replies to charges of elitism and
ethnocentrism, the stigma of these accusations persists against vegan and other
animal advocates. This debate about the ethnocentric and elitist nature of fleshfree eating and living has even entered feminist theory (George 1994; Adams
1995; Donovan 1995; Gaard and Gruen 1995; Bailey 2007). What accounts for
the popularity of the critique against feminist work on animals despite the weaknesses of the position outlined above? For one, as Cathryn Bailey details, foodways are hugely constitutive of social identities within multiple hierarchies;
when consuming animal bodies upgrades ones class status, resists feminization,
or recuperates/reclaims a stigmatized racialized identity, for example, we should
not be surprised that such consumption is difficult to abandon for those seeking
to stake out certain identities (Bailey 2007, 4447). Moreover, when the arguments seem to emanate only from white, Western, middle-class authors, it is
tempting to dismiss the arguments as imperialist rather than take up the challenge of antispeciesism. Vegan animal advocacy is certainly no less immune than
other social movements to the partiality of worldviews of the majority of its
adherents. But such feminist work has repeatedly taken care to advocate for a
contextual approach to vegetarianism rather than a complete universal (Bailey
2007). The ethnocentric characterization of this scholarship, however, continues.
It thus seems more persuasive and effective to respond by developing a posthumanist feminist theory that is as keen on racial and cultural analyses as it is

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on gendered ones, and that recognizes the ways in which these categories
dynamically intersect. This development will enable posthumanist feminist theory to move closer to postcolonial feminist theory and thus allay the concerns of
critics that the former is unaware of racial and cultural pressure points. As feminist theorists know, postcolonial feminist theory has targeted the colonialist
framing of Western feminist analyses of womens issues in the global South (primarily revolving around sexual violence, bodily dress and alteration, and family
relations). These framings typically invest in discourses of exaggerated cultural
difference (Khandelwal 2009, 583). A fundamental premise of postcolonial feminist theory has thus been to denounce any assumption regarding the superiority
of Western cultures vis-a`-vis other cultures.
This premise is already present in feminist animal scholarship. If anything,
posthumanist feminist theory (as opposed to popular cultural sensibilities about
animal suffering) has located the cause of institutional animal exploitation in
the Western intellectual tradition of Cartesian thought (Plumwood 1993,
10417; Adams 1995, 22122; Adams and Donovan 1996, 4345; Gaard
1997). In this regard, posthumanist feminist theory does not exhibit the cultural myopia or ignorance of racialization processes exhibited in on-the-ground
vegan animal advocacy (Harper 2010). Yet such theory can still manifest the
related urge to extend positions born out of criticizing Western contexts
beyond Western borders, even with contextualization (Plumwood 2000).
Moreover, a second problematic assumption of Western feminist theory about
non-Western women that postcolonial theory critiquesthe privileged role
accorded to gender as an analytical tool over and above other agents of difference (Mohanty 1991; Narayan 1997)is, as discussed above, a staple of
posthumanist feminist theory. Inserting a postcolonial filter into the area will
quickly broaden the theorys analysis and give less fodder to critics about its
purported imperialism and racism.
The essentialism and ethnocentrism of mainstream Western humanist feminist analyses has made meaningful and egalitarian alliances with women from
less influential geopolitical spaces a challenge. In order to avoid a similar theoretical and political fate, posthumanist feminist theory should extend its pivot
point beyond gender. This does not mean that all universal claims must be abandoned, that gender must be downplayed, or that a vegan or other animal emancipatory position is inherently essentialist, ethnocentric, or imperialist. Rather,
such a move would simply signal awareness of the methodological inadequacy of
only a gendered analysis of posthumanist issues as well as the need to attend to
the racial and cultural dimensions of these same gendered issues. Posthumanist
feminist theory would then be less prone to anti-essentialist, critical race, and
postcolonial critiques and more capable of sophisticated, intersectional readings.
The next section reveals the frequent need for this intersectional approach by
exploring the intersectional nature of posthumanist issues.

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POSTCOLONIAL PROMINENCE
In this section, I wish to demonstrate the conceptual reasons that enculturation
and racialization processes should be mainstreamed within feminist work on animals. Here, I substantiate the claim made above as to why race and culture are
important to crafting ethical practices with respect to animals apart from their
potential for removing residual essentialism and ethnocentrism and building better coalitions. To a large extent, these concepts are important for understanding
how animal lives are mediated because they are important for understanding
how human lives are mediated. If we accept the arguments in postcolonial feminist theory about the centrality of colonial power in creating differentiated gender systems and instituting the idea of racial categories and varying levels of
humanity and animality (Spivak 1985; McClintock 1995; Lugones 2007), then
this insight should be uncontroversial. If the fictions of race and gender were
central in humanizing some, then it is apparent how these concepts also relate
to animalizing others, both human and nonhuman (Anderson 2007; Bailey
2007). Conceptions of animals and idealized humanity are also deeply culturally
contingent. Indeed, representations of humans as: 1) not-animal in Western
popular imaginations despite the teachings of Western science that humans are
also animals; and 2) as a species on top of a taxonomical hierarchy, constitute a
paradigmatic example of Western cultural construction. Moreover, human
human relations and the ideas of cultural hierarchies, civilizational progress, and
racial distinctions take their timbre quite heavily from ideas about animals. As
posthumanist feminist theory has argued with respect to animals and women, a
two-way relationship exists. There are multiple ways to see this interrelated,
intersectional dynamic. Three examples are presented below.

ANIMAL DISPUTES

AS

POSTCOLONIAL

Race and culture are deeply imbricated in animal issues and disputes. At a foundational level, we can see that Western ideas of mans dominion over animals
reflect a deeply gendered and imperial understanding of human relationships
with animals. The idea of a food chain at the apex of which sits Man, as superior to and main predator over all beings, is part of this Western narrative,
which is integral to constituting human identity for Western subjects (Fudge
2010). To provide some concrete illustrations of the effects of a cultural hierarchy, consider that the distinctions drawn among food animals, research animals, companion animals, and so on are products of cultural ideas that become
entrenched over time. There simply is no noncultural explanation, for example,
as to why society has a general revulsioncurrently motivating a proposed legislative ban in the United Statesto eating horses, but not, for example, to eating

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cows. Though the consumption of guinea pigs and shark fins may be routine in
other cultures, their consumption is seen as increasingly aberrant in Western
legal systems, representing traditional values that are out of step with modern
humane and eco-friendly sentiments (Chan 2011; Rider 2011).
It is not simply food practices of other cultures that come under greater
legal inspection and regulation (Valverde 2008). Other non-Western activities
that are perceived as exotic and undesirable are also held to a higher level of
scrutiny. Of the fraction of animal-based practices banned today under anticruelty laws, most are associated with a minority community (Elder et al. 1998). As
the legal definition of cruelty typically turns on the idea of unnecessary suffering, only those practices the law views as unnecessary will be criminalized.
The very few practices targeted as cruel under anticruelty statutes, such as
cock-fighting and dog-fighting, are often associated with marginalized cultural
and racialized communities, whereas mainstream institutional practices (factory
farming, vivisection, circuses, and so on) are rarely labeled as cruel. Indeed,
majoritarian cultures today use cultural practices involving animals to help calibrate civilization status (Elder et al. 1998). Mainstream multicultural discourses
thus label minority cultures as backward/barbaric in their sensibilities toward
animals much the same way they classify minority cultures as behind Western
ones based on their perceived treatment of women (Deckha 2004). This, of
course, is not to suggest that these minority practices are ethically acceptable,
but to note the racialized and postcolonial dimensions of these discourses.

POSTCOLONIAL

AND

RACIALIZED ISSUES

AS

ANIMALIZED

One need not go too far back in history to see that reified notions of race and
outsider subjects were part of national projects to shape human nature and who
counted as human. As such, concepts of race and culture depended on ideas
about animality and humanity. The events of the Holocaust and the Rwandan
genocide are but relatively recent examples. As Dan Stone comments:
The genocide carried out by Hutu Power was based on a strong
belief in the need to rid Rwanda of Tutsis, and was justified with...
an ideological program (in its most basic version, the Hutu Ten
Commandments) that not only resembled Nazi anti-Semitism in
terms of fantasies and phobias about the polluting race, but that
required the removal of Tutsis from the category of human in
order to bring peace to Rwanda. (Stone 2007, 241)
Stone proceeds to present numerous examples wherein perpetrators tell of
encouragement to view their victims as animals in order to execute the violence,
and how a formidable impediment to their ability to kill arose when the killers

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could see humanity in their Other (24142). The reliance of racialist discourses
on species-based distinctions and ideas of animality, of course, may be traced
back much further than the last century. One need only recall the logic of social
Darwinism that emerged to temper European anxieties over Darwins then disruptive theory that Europeans had bestial origins and kin (Corbey 2005). And,
of course, American slavery was justified through legal and other representations
of Africans as a separate species with prohibitions against miscegenation and
other policing of black and white associations premised on racial anxieties
informed in part by species logics (Darian-Smith 2010).
Such theories led to the adoption of animal terminology in descriptors of colonized peoples. As Stone points out, colonists in Australia often likened Aboriginal people to troublesome wild animal[s] that could be shot and hunted
down, whenever seen in the open country (Stone 2007, 233). This attitude
helped justify imperial land seizure, eugenics, and other civilizing projects
(Anderson and Perrin 2007). In India and Africa, too, colonial control grew out
of a reliance on an animalhuman spectrum. Black Africans were animalized
through comparisons with apes and monkeys (Price and Shildrick 1999, 23) or
situated as pests to be exterminated (Mavhunga 2011); colonial legislation governed Indians as criminal animals (Pandian 2008). These are but a sampling of
the array of international instances by which violence was enacted against colonized human beings through the differentiating logic of animalization, racialization, and dehumanization.

SPECIES

AND

SOCIAL LOCATIONS

Another method of understanding the nexus among culture, race, and species is
to take a close look at the constitution of human social identities through animal-based practices and institutions. This is already a routine practice of posthumanist feminist theory in relation to gender. A main point of feminist work on
animals is to reveal how gender identities rely in part on animal-based cultural
practices. A central thesis of Adamss Sexual Politics of Meat is that meat-eating
is vital to the constitution and affirmation of conventional masculinity (Adams
1990). The consumption of animal flesh, and particular types of animals, is part
of a potent cultural gender code. If masculinity and femininity are in part constituted through opposing food practices, notably the consumption of animal bodies
to signal hegemonic manliness and the minimization of animals and consumption of plant sources to signal hegemonic femininity (Adams 1990; Sobal 2005),
then it is also possible to reflect upon how other human identities inflecting masculine and feminine performances take shape through animal bodies. Recall that
in regard to food consumption, which type of animal is considered edible is itself
indelibly cultural. Of those animals placed in the edible category, certain animals

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come to signify an iconic nationalist and patriotic identity (steak, haggis, fish
and chips) as deeply as they might a dominant masculinity. The Western association of men with meat, and with red meat, in particular, with a hegemonic
form of masculinity is just thatWesternand not universal (Sobal 2005).
Certainly, a white Western male may be penalized for not fulfilling the sexist
and heterosexist script, but this script itself is not universal (Bailey 2007, 44).
Indeed, as Bailey has observed in her discussions about the reproduction of
racial identities through foodways (Bailey 2007, 4748), that is why partaking in
vegetarian diets as well as non-Western cuisine marked as ethnic in the Western context can be constitutive of a special, more global/sophisticated/elite, type
of whiteness. Those (un)marked as white and Western are able to safely
appropriate the cultural associations of flesh-free diets without being marked as
Other. Recall that imperialist identity depended in part on the idea that those
who ate flesh were superior to the savages who followed a vegetarian diet. Cultures with vegetable and grain-focused diets were depicted as weak, primitive,
and backward and (E)uropean colonial ventures were often justified as progressive crusades against... feudalistic vegetarianism (Belasco 2006, 9). Whereas the
presence/absence of animal consumption coded colonial identities through representations of vegetarian cultures as different and inferior, Bailey notes how these
diets today are a mark of cosmopolitan status for white consumers.
Nonedible forms of animal consumption also constitute cultural and racial
identities for humans. Consider how colonial subjectivities took shape through
the then new urban institution of zoos. The establishment and administration of
zoos fortified colonial identities of the metropole and the hinterland, and of the
colonized and the colonizers (Anderson 1998; Ritvo 1987). The zoo came to be
seen as part of the repertoire marking cities as places of high culture and their
inhabitatants as paradigmatic humans compared to the natural realm of the colonies and hinterlands and their inhabitants. At a time when more and more
agricultural animals were deliberately excluded from urban environments
through discourses of cleanliness and morality (Philo 1998), the zoo represented
a civilized urban space that permitted the presence of wild animals; mastery
over nature could be asserted through captivity and spatial ordering. In her case
study of the establishment of the Adelaide Zoo in New Zealand, Anderson notes
how scientific taxonomic and geographic mapping practices were deployed to
enclose and separate one species and geographical region from another, offering
viewers the opportunity to imagine the individual animal before them as representative of their designated species and to tour the zoo as one would tour world
colonies. She further notes how colonial and masculinist imaginations were put
to work creating enclosures for certain favored animals that resembled the imagined coveted domestic spaces of the colonies (Anderson 1998, 4041). So-called
rare animals were highlighted both by the zoos themselves and by the media
because the capture of such species further emphasized the level of control

Maneesha Deckha

541

exercised over colonial environments (Ritvo 1987, 217). Similar intersectional

dynamics implicating postcolonial and gendered identities also operated in circuses (Arrighi 2008).
From this brief sampling of humananimal interactions, the role culture and
race play in influencing Western epistemologies about animals, speciesist practices, and human social identities is evident. It is not clear that retaining gender
as the presumptive starting point will yield this intersectional understanding for
these or other posthumanist issues.

MULTIPLE STARTING POINTS

I have argued that Western posthumanist feminist theory has to better recognize the importance of race and culture in shaping the current abysmal situation for animals. In highlighting the salience of these different constructs in
attending to the animal question, the purpose is not to undermine the work
that gender does in structuring humananimal relations or to occlude the salience of other difference-related factors or processes. Perhaps most obviously,
the role of global capitalism and class relations in maintaining the abject status
of animals cannot be underestimated. After all, it is capitalism and the protection that property rights are given in law that enable the complete commodification of animals as property. Also pertinent is the heterosexist worldview by
which many have filtered animal behavior and projected cultural identities onto
animals (Hird 2006) and the processes by which animal associations and
nonhuman identities are queered (Giffney and Hird 2008; Chen 2010;
DellAversanno 2010). Emphasizing race and culture is not a move to diminish
other agents of difference.
Although race and culture are by no means the only two agents of difference
that combine with gender to structure and mediate species-based oppression, race
and culture do play a prominent role in this regard. By thinking of the similarities between the condition of women and animals as turning not on one or two
difference categories operating discretely, but through an intersectional matrix in
which race and culture figure decisively, posthumanist feminist theory will be
able to navigate the postcoloniality of the animal question much better
(Armstrong 2002). This will assist in building alliances with others, especially
those residing in different cultural contexts, who are equally concerned about
animals and women but who may not regard gender as the presumptive departure point for analysis. Posthumanist feminist theory will also be more adept at
avoiding accusations of exclusion, however flimsy or forceful. This will make for
a firmer footing from which feminists working on animals can encourage their
mainstream humanist counterparts to include species difference as part of the
intersectional matrix in their intersectional analyses. At its heart, this has been

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an argument for extending the influence of posthumanist feminist theory by

mapping out more of these connections in a sustained way.

NOTES
I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
for research support for this Article.
1. Some of these theorists explicitly use the term intersectionality and others do not.
All of these theorists, however, have emphasized the same critique of white Western feminism that multiple analytics of difference must be examined interactively to understand
discrimination and other forms of oppression against women. For a discussion of the nuances in the literature, see Dhamoon 2011.

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