PRESENTER: I think
everyone's got their food.
We're going to get started here.
So thank you all
for coming today.
As I was putting
up the posters, I
saw there's literally
like 30 other events
going on this afternoon.
So thanks for showing up.
So Angela Harris is the
Distinguished Professor
of Law, Boochever and Bird
Endowed Chair of the Study
and Teaching of
Freedom of Equality,
and director of the Aoki
Center for Critical Race Nation
Studies at the UC
Davis School of Law.
She writes widely in the field
of critical legal theory,
examining how law sometime
reinforces and sometimes
challenges subordination on
the basis of race, gender,
sexuality, class, and
other dimensions of power
and identity.
I first met Professor
Harris back in 1991
at Berkeley School of
Law when she had recently
joined the faculty and was
already a rising start there.
In 2009 Professor
Harris published
an article entitled "Should
People of Color Support Animal
Rights?"
And that was published in
the Journal of Animal Law.
And that will serve as a
starting point for today's
conversation with Professor
Kristen Stilt. Professor Stilt
is the faculty director of the
animal law and policy program
here at Harvard, and
also was the director
of the Islamic legal studies
program, law and social change.
So I think Professor Harris
is going to speak first,
and then the two of them
will engage conversation.
And I'll handle it over
to the two of them now.
[APPLAUSE]
And we'll have some
questions as well.
ANGELA HARRIS: Thanks
so much for coming.
Can you hear me?
I know I'm supposed
to be recorded here.
So I want to thank Chris
and Kelly and Kristin
for being here as
well, and making
it possible for me to be here.
And I don't consider myself
an animal rights person,
per se, because I
don't teach that class.
I think of myself as a
critical race feminist
who's interested in
animal studies because
of its fit with an
anti-subordination perspective.
So that's the basis
of my remarks today.
And as Chris mentioned,
some years ago
I wrote this essay called
"Should People of Color Support
Animal Rights."
And in it I was
criticizing a PETA campaign
in which they
visually [? rhyme ?]
pictures of gorillas and
other animals in captivity
with pictures of black
people in chains.
And the idea behind
the campaign was
that our society has realized
that enslaving black people is
wrong and now we need
to take the next step
and stop enslaving
non-human animals.
So my point in
that essay was not
to hate on PETA in particular,
which does some great work,
rather to use that
campaign as an example
of a very familiar and well
used liberal narrative--
a similar narrative
by the way that
has been used and
also drawn criticism
in the context of LGBT rights.
And it breaks down as using the
template of black civil rights
to argue for other
kinds of rights.
So animals are the new black.
Gays are the new black.
You wouldn't do this
to black people,
so we shouldn't do it to--
insert your group here.
And in my essay,
I try to explain
why this narrative tends to
divide rather than unite.
In the PETA example
the argument is
that the campaign
simultaneously managed
to compare apes to black people,
visually evoking a racist slur,
and to tell a story that
assumes that the civil rights
campaign of black people
was a success, which
if you're paying
attention to Black Lives
Matter is clearly not the case.
Another aspect of this liberal
story of animal rights,
which I argue is inherently
unappealing to people of color,
has been it's implicitly
colonial narrative.
And by that I mean that it
calls on the missionary story
in which we save others who
are cute, helpless, innocent,
and/or less fortunate
than ourselves.
And this is not
an immoral story,
but it's ethically problematic.
It's a story that, for
example, historically
has given white
privileged women agency
to travel and to exercise power,
because it implicitly calls
on gendered logic of care.
It's a story, for
example, that had
particular effect
in Victorian era,
allowing white colonial women
to participate in imperialism
through missions of charity.
And it comes back in
the US progressive era
in the settlement movement,
in immigrant communities,
and in the various eras of
Native American assimilation
projects.
And the problematic
nature of these movements
is in its lack of attention
to the dynamics of power.
So the campaign to
save others involves
the implicit assumption that
you, your world, and your way
of doing things is
the most advanced,
and that you yourself
are innocent of power,
altruistic, and good.
So today I want to just
break down that argument
a little more by suggesting
that this liberal narrative is
composed both of an ontology,
a way of thinking about beings
and subjects, and
a practice that
uses the dividing
line between us
and them, human and
non-human, as a justification
for social projects of
extermination, exploitation,
and marginalization, of both
human and non-human entities.
And to talk about the
ontology of liberalism
I want to use a couple of a
scene from the movie Get Out,
which if you haven't
seen it, it's brilliant.
You should go see it.
There's a little bit of
spoiler, but not major spoilers.
So if you haven't
seen it, don't worry.
So the premise of the movie,
if you don't already know,
is that the hero is a black
man who's dating a white woman,
and he's agreed to spend
a weekend in the country
to meet her family.
And he asks her, do
they know I'm black?
And she says, no,
but don't worry,
because they're good
liberals, and her dad
would have voted for Obama for
third term if he could have.
But it's a horror
movie, so everything
goes wrong from there.
And very early in
the movie there's
an interesting scene where the
couple, they're driving along,
they're in the middle
of the country,
and going to her parents' house.
Something hits the car.
And it's the first jump
scare of the movie.
They stop and they get
out to see what happened.
And at first you
don't see anything,
but you hear this weird moaning.
The girlfriend doesn't
want him to investigate.
But the hero, of course,
because it's a horror movie,
gets out to see what's going on.
And it turns out
that they hit a deer.
And there's a point
of view shot where
we're looking at the dying
deer from the perspective
of the hero who
feels sorry for it,
but he's helpless to do anything
about it, helpless to save it.
And then the story moves on.
And we're at the parents'
house, a big secluded mansion.
The hero meets the parents.
It's all fine.
They tell the parents
about the deer.
And the father goes
on this rant about how
he's glad they killed it
because deer are overrunning
the area like a plague.
One more dead deer
is a good thing.
If they killed them all, it
wouldn't matter to him at all.
He wishes they would
all be wiped out.
And on its surface this
scene doesn't have anything
to do with the
rest of the movie,
other than to make the
audience feel uneasy.
But in terms of the deep
structure of the film's
argument, it makes perfect
sense, because what underlies
this contempt for a
non-human species,
and what turns out to be
the deep anti-black racism,
is a will to power
that turns all beings
other than the privileged
group into objects
to be exploited at will.
And it's a will to power that's
based on a set of beliefs
about biological
truth, expressing
the view that some
bodies are naturally
different in certain
ways than others.
And this belief in
biological difference
then justifies and
legitimates the will
to power held by the master
group, the master race.
And that's what I think of as
the ontology of humanism that
underlies the liberal
narrative that I'm criticizing.
When this ontology is employed
within the human species,
it cashes out as
classical racism.
Some groups of
humans are naturally
different from others.
One version of this is Nazi
eugenics, which imagines
master races and slave races.
Another version is
supposedly less toxic.
It's the David
Duke version, which
claims that it's not a
matter of better or worse,
it's just difference.
Different races,
different civilizations
can never assimilate.
They have to pursue their
separate evolutionary paths
or disaster will ensue.
But of course, the
difference only version
is unstable because as
soon as one imagines
any conflict or any scarcity,
then it becomes us versus them,
and it collapses
back into those who
have the power get the will
and the ability to rule others.
When the same
ontologies are employed
outside the human
species it cashes out
as enlightened philosophy.
Humans are special, different
from all other species,
placed by God above
the rest of nature.
And it's part of
our unique destiny
to exercise dominion over
everything that isn't human.
We can see the close kinship
between classical racism
and this philosophy of dominion
through the way in which we
prepare ourselves to torture,
slaughter, and exploit
other humans by quote,
"dehumanizing them," and making
them symbolically and
rhetorically into animals.
And there are a number of
his philosophical writings
that explore the
origin of this ontology
and find it in
the Enlightenment.
The take away is that if we are
ontological humanism the line
between humans and non-humans
or human and animal itself
licenses so-called
inhuman behavior
on the part of the powerful.
And that's the truth that's
embedded in the PETA campaign.
So if humanist
ontology is the theory,
industrial and post-industrial
capitalism is the practice.
As I'm sure you all know, we're
increasingly quickly destroying
our own planetary support system
through a runaway capitalism
that imagines natural resources
and our own technological
capacities to be infinite.
And yes, there are efforts
to fix this within capitalism
itself through practice
is like carbon taxes,
and other projects like the
development of green energy
that can help us adapt to
and mitigate climate change.
But overall, the commitment of
the most powerful human groups
on the planet to a
humanist ontology,
and the capacity of
capitalist practices
to engulf almost
all human activity,
seems to be leading to not
only what Elizabeth Kolbert has
written about as the
sixth great extinction
among non-human species,
but also our own extinction,
or at least a transition
crisis that only some of us
will survive.
And this notion is captured in
the term anthropocene, the idea
that we're now living
on a planet that's
feeling the effects of
unrestrained capitalism
in every place and every
level, and dominated
by this humanist ontology
in which everything revolves
around us, everything
in the world
is placed for our benefit.
And some intellectuals
call the anthropocene,
the capitalistscene.
So that's the essence
of the critique.
What might be the alternative?
Well, as I'm sure
you know, there
have been a number
of legal projects
to try to bring
non-human animals
into the law as subjects,
not as objects of care
as in animal welfare, but as in
subjects in and for themselves.
So for example, in 2013,
the Nonhuman Rights Project,
led by the animal rights
lawyer Steven Weiss,
filed a habeus corpus
suit in upstate New York
on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee
being held in captivity.
And further back
from that, in 1972,
as the second wave
of environmentalism
was emerging in the
US, Christopher Stone
published an article
in the USC Law Review
called "Should Tress
Have Standing--
Toward Legal Right
for Natural Objects."
So I think as lawyers
we already have
technology for representing
the interests of nonhumans.
In a way, passing new
statutes, getting to court
is the easier problem,
even though it's
difficult in and of itself.
I think the harder problem is
developing an ontology other
than this liberal one, in which
who and what gets represented
depends either on
its resemblance to us
or its usefulness to us.
And that's the
process through which
chimpanzees, and
orcas, and baby seals
get to be represented first.
Snails and ants have to be
at the back of the line.
Without an underlying
cultural change
that gets a robust minority of
Western folks to value nonhuman
entities not as others to
be saved or tools for us,
but as kin, then the best
legal efforts will fail.
So I also teach
critical race theory.
And I've recently been teaching
about post-colonial discourse
and post-colonial practices.
It occurred to me that
there is a way in which some
of the practices going
on, projects going on
right now that are
post-colonial nature
converge with the project of
protecting nonhuman beings.
So one place to
think about this is
last month, towards
the end of February,
indigenous leaders from around
the world met at the United
Nations to develop a new status
for indigenous governments
that would allow them to
participate in the UN system
as governments.
Why are they currently not
allowed to participate?
Because only
sovereign states are
allowed to participate
fully in the UN system
and be considered the
subjects of international law.
Indigenous peoples
are not defined
under the UN system
of states, but as
peoples, this ambiguous status.
And why are indigenous
peoples are not
considered to have governments?
Because during the period
of European colonialism
they were defined within
the law of nations
as lying outside
the civilized world.
And the key legal move
that conceptualized
indigenous people in this
way is lacking the capacity
to be the legal subjects
of international law
was the doctrine of discovery,
which you're probably
familiar with from
Johnson versus Macintosh,
and other cases as well.
Under the doctrine of discovery,
land occupied by heathens
is technically terra
nullius, empty land
that is free for the taking
by the European powers.
Only Europeans can hold real
property in [? fee ?] simple.
Native people can only have
Indian title, or possessory
title.
Chief Justice John
Marshall did not
invent the doctrine
of discovery, however.
It was taken from
the law of nations
and incorporated
into domestic law.
And that international
law of nations in turn
emerged from canon law
set forth by the pope.
Not being Christian meant
that you existed without law.
And the doctrine
of prescription,
which presumes
that if you possess
a territory for a
long time, you own it,
did not apply to infidels.
As a doctrine, of
the law of nations,
the doctrine of discovery
aided the colonial project,
not just in the United States,
but in European settler
projects around the world, in
Canada, New Zealand, Australia,
Brazil, Spain, Portugal,
and other places.
They conveniently
rationalize the subjugation
of native peoples in the
new world, Asia, and Africa.
And it wrote
indigenous peoples out
of the international
legal system altogether.
Now how does this
story intersect
with the animal rights story?
Haudenosaunee
people from what now
is the American
Northeast-- they're
also known as the Iroquois.
And they presented a conference
paper to the UN Permanent Forum
on Indigenous Issues,
whose intention
is to undo the
thinking that suggests
that they were ever conquered.
They call for the right to
redress, restitution, or when
that's not possible, a just
fair and equitable compensation
for the lands,
territories, and resources
which they have traditionally
owned or otherwise occupied
or used.
But the larger aim
of this project,
according to Tonya
Gonnella Frichner,
who before her early death
in 2015 from breast cancer,
founded the American-Indian Law
Alliance, is to save the Earth.
She wrote, quote,
"Indigenous peoples
are woven into the
biological fabric
of their traditional
territories,
which they are charged with
a sacred responsibility
to maintain for
future generations."
And there are indigenous
peoples around the world
who are prepared to once again
take on this responsibility.
As you might know, in 2008
the constitution of Ecuador
granted rights to nature.
And the origin of these rights
if not the Anglo-American
common law tradition,
but the tradition
of indigenous Amazonian people.
In 2012, the New
Zealand government
recognized the rights
of the Whanganui River.
The Whanganui River iwi, which
is a group of people somewhat
like a tribe, an
indigenous community
with a strong spiritual,
cultural relationship
with the river has
been advocating
for legal recognition
of the river since 1873.
But now in 2012, the
agreement recognizes
the river as a single
entity, Te Awa Tupua,
with legal rights and
interest, and the owner
of its own river bed.
And the Whanganui
River iwi are now
recognized as joint
custodians with the government
entrusted to protect
the river for
present and future generations.
Closer still, last October, the
state of Hawaii adopted a new
code of practice and procedure
for the [NON-ENGLISH] advisory
committee within the Department
of Land and Natural Resources.
And just to call out a few
of the definitions from
the beginning of
the code section,
[NON-ENGLISH] is a resource
realm which the ancient
[NON-ENGLISH] councils
considered when making
decisions.
It encompasses everything above
the air, the land, the air,
the sky, the clouds, the
birds, and the rainbows.
[NON-ENGLISH], sorry
for the pronunciation--
is a resource realm which the
ancient [NON-ENGLISH] council
considered when
making decisions.
It includes the
natural resources
important to sustain people.
However, care for
these resources
are based on their
intrinsic value.
Management is based on
providing for the benefit
of the resources
themselves, rather than
from the perspective of how
these resources serve people.
So what if those of us who care
about animal rights and animal
protection studied Indian
law, not federal Indian law,
but tribal law, and
the international law
of indigenous peoples?
And what if we together tried to
build a coalition politics that
seeks to give legal voice to
human and nonhuman animals,
but letting
indigenous communities
lead with a different
ontology, one that is not
derived from the Western
Judeo-Christian story that
gives dominion of human beings
over everything else on Earth?
Thinking about animal protection
is an anti-colonialist project.
And decolonization as an
animal protection project
is one path bringing
together the political and
legal projects of animal
protection, race, class,
and gender.
So those are some
thoughts that I came up
with in preparing for this talk.
And I'm happy, excited to have
a conversation with Kristin,
and with you, who are more
versed in animal rights
than I am.
Think you.
KRISTEN STILT:
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
Maybe I'll just ask
you a few questions,
and then we'll turn
to the audience.
I think that the movie's
lesson was really insightful.
And so one take
away from that you
brought us is that there is this
critique of liberalism in which
the other is always the other.
And I think one of
the implications
of that is that we all
then, all of us who are not
part of the liberal elite
that you've critiqued,
should then work together.
Or somehow the similarities can
be used in some liberatory way.
And yet you started
with the critique
of the PETA
advertisement in a way
that that was insensitive, more
problematic, and more putting
off than it was inclusive.
So I guess it really leads
to the next question, which
is how can these
comparisons possibly
be used in a productive way?
Is there a way to be more
blunt, to do a better
job than the PETA analysis?
Is there way to
draw upon the title
of the talk, in which
all marginalized groups,
whether it's gender,
or race, or species,
can somehow work together or
share the stories in a way
that's not problematic?
ANGELA HARRIS: And
that's what I meant
when I gave the example
of indigenous people,
that if we go down deep
to the roots of where
some of these
ideologies come from,
including the
liberal's story, then
we can see how, if we
attack the deep roots,
we can create
coalitions that are
based not on this inherently
disrespectful notion of--
we're the powerful we're
going to now pull you in,
and this liberal narrative
of group after groups slowly
gets included, but rather
attacking what I think
is using anti-colonial
ideology to get at the roots,
both of the dominion
of humans over animals,
and the dominion of some
humans over other humans.
And so what I think is
exciting about the turn
towards indigenous rights is
that a lot of indigenous folks
never accepted, were never
part of that initial story,
but really come to the story
with a very different set
of philosophical commitments.
There's some really
interesting work
being done by a graduate
student at Duke who
is working on the
Ecuador constitution
and exploring the origins of it.
And he talks about
the philosophy
of some of the Amazonian
Indians whose ideology
inspired the Constitution.
And that's a set of cultures
in which people sometimes
turn into jaguars.
People commune with spirits.
People have regular interactions
with animals, but not
in the Western utilitarian way.
So if we took that kind of
line, that kind of worldview
as a starting point, and built
out or interpreted the existing
constitution from
that perspective,
rather than imposing
our Western narrative
on the statutory language,
I think we might come out
in very different places.
KRISTEN STILT: So
let me follow up with
regards to Nonhuman Rights
Project, which you mentioned,
I think, in a way,
it's a potential model
in a positive way.
So as you may know, or many
of you may know in the class,
the habeas claims on behalf
of certain chimpanzees
are, of course,
premised on the fact
that they have autonomy that
looks very similar to humans.
They're the highest in
the chain of autonomy
as Steve Weiss characterizes it.
But when he's
bringing the habeus
claims he has one
fundamental problem, which
is that animals are property.
And habeas claims on
the behalf of a property
is not something
we're accustomed to.
But if you look back,
what's the example
of a propertied
entity on whose behalf
habeas claims have
been brought--
slaves?
And that forms an important part
of his argument, one in which
some judges have said, we
don't really want to hear that.
We don't want to
hear more about that.
How does that fit in?
I guess I'm trying to get at
are any of these comparisons
viable?
Is there any middle space,
or are we all moving
towards the PETA example?
Granted, the indigenous
example you gave is fantastic.
But when someone harnesses
it in a different way,
are there possibilities there?
ANGELA HARRIS: Well, I really
worry about that comparison.
And I think it's a
comparison that, as you say,
the logic drives us towards
because we're inside
of this Anglo-American
common law tradition, which
has embedded within it this
ontological humanism that I've
talked about.
So there are good
reasons for going there,
but again, I feel like it's
not getting deep enough.
It's not a radical
enough critique
to really get us
where we want to go
in terms of a true partnership
between the Justice Project
for People of Color and Justice
Project for Nonhuman Animals.
It might work as a tactic
to open up the courts.
So I'm not saying,
oh, the whole project
is misguided from the start.
But I think that we really
need a deeper and more radical
break from the liberal
narrative in order
to really transform our
relationship with nonhuman
animals and transform
our relationship
with the planet in
a way that, I think,
is going to be truly healthy.
So then we get to the
question of, well,
how do you make change
within social movement?
And there I'm very much a
believer of inside strategies
and outside strategies.
So maybe one way to think about
the Nonhuman Rights Project
is that's an inside strategy.
The post-colonial
indigenous rights project
is an outside strategy.
And both of them
together can maybe
help push the movement along.
So I'm not a purist in
suggesting that there's
only one proper way to go.
But I am suggesting that the
Anglo-American liberal common
law rights path is one
that inherently takes us
to this racist place of equating
slaves with gorillas, or orcas,
or other sorts of
animals, and doing
this ranking in which the
thing that we're trying to save
or protect has to be like us
in some way in order for us
to see its value,
recognize its value.
I think we've got to have this
place of well, it's a subject,
it feels pain, it has
consciousness, it thinks.
We have to have these tests of
cognition in order for folks
to be persuaded.
And that's the game that
white people have been playing
with people of color forever.
Are you smart enough?
Is your civilization
advanced enough?
Do you think in the right way?
Do you have the
right rule of law?
Do you have the right
kind of government?
We're familiar with
those sorts of tasks.
And so I think that path
only gets you so far.
KRISTEN STILT: So
in some ways I hear
you saying the idea of
a rights-based approach
is not where you want to go.
Maybe that's moving away from
the article, which as we said,
should people of color
support animal rights?
And you go on to have somewhat
of a hopeful story at the end,
that the right kind of rights--
could it be something that you
would say, yes, people of color
should get behind.
But I'm hearing you say
something like, you really
want to dispense with the idea
of a rights-based approach
completely.
And your approach
is something else.
It's based on some
other kind of ethic.
ANGELA HARRIS: I don't think
I'm against rights per se.
I mean, I really like
both the Bolivian
and the Ecuadorian constitutions
that grants rights to nature.
And there have been
several attempts
to create this
so-called jurisprudence
in other countries as well,
including the New Zealand
example that I cited.
The problem isn't with
rights as a structure.
As I suggested, I think
that lawyers are actually
doing the law, having
the technology, which
includes rights, include
practice of lawyering.
That's, in some
ways, the easy part.
And it's a tool that can be
used in many different ways.
The question is what
anchors that technology
and those tools?
And is it going to be anchored
by a philosophy of is it like
us, in which case we protect
it, or is it not like us,
in which that case we don't.
This constant trying
to judge status--
Or is it going to be anchored in
a different kind of philosophy
and ontology, which, I think,
the New Zealand example, even
the Hawaii example, exemplify.
The language on the
page might be the same,
but the practices, the
understandings, the concepts,
the philosophies that
underlie those practices
on the page, those words on
the page, and make them live,
is coming from a different
place, a different set
of traditions and customs.
So in that way I'm
kind of arguing
for the importance of
having social norms,
understanding the
social norms that
are embedded in legal
rights and legal practices
and institutions, and paying
attention to both parts.
KRISTEN STILT: So I
think, to some extent
then, is this more of
an environmental ethic?
Are you drawing more upon tools
of the environmental movement
than the animal
movement, per se,
when you're proposing
this alternative approach?
Where does the environmental
ethic appear in here?
ANGELA HARRIS: I
guess I'm interested
in indigenous approaches that
confuse the distinction that we
would make between
environment and animal,
environmental rights
and animal rights.
I mean, within the US
tradition, for example,
we have a body of
environmental law, which
views animals in species
terms, as a resource,
or as part of a biosphere,
or part of an ecosystem that
needs to be protected.
And that's one body of law.
And then we have this
other body of law
that sees animals either as
individual members of a species
or in some cases as
species themselves,
but seek to protect
them for their own sake.
What if we went to a philosophy
or a body of law that
confused the borders
between those two
and didn't think about, well,
there's an environment here
and there's animals over
here, but thought of life
as a web that includes
animals, and so-called nonhuman
entities like rivers,
and like trees,
and nonhuman animals as part
of the same kind of system?
So what I'm proposing
is not to say
we should look to
environmental law per se,
but again, to look to
other traditions that maybe
conceptualize the environment
or animals and humans
in a completely different way.
KRISTEN STILT: So
mindful of the time,
I think we should take some
questions from everyone
who's gathered here.
Chris, so you want to take
care of the microphone?
AUDIENCE 1: Thank you so much.
This has been
really interesting.
I think that this
idea of turning
to indigenous knowledges seems
really productive in a way.
But for me, it also provokes
some anxieties of white people
with dream catchers and
Lakota brand deodorant.
And I wonder of the
dangers of trying
to exploit indigenous knowledges
as a source of mainstream law
and culture, some
of the risks there.
And related to that,
I think there is also
an obstacle to coalition there,
at least Canada where I'm from,
where the animal rights movement
is also a very white movement
and has made some
clueless moves,
particularly going after First
Nation's practices like seal
hunts.
And so I wonder
about the work that
needs to be done to build a
foundation for sharing that
would have a equal as opposed
to exploitative dimension?
I'm interested in
your thoughts on that.
ANGELA HARRIS: I think
that's a great question.
And I think that's the perfect
question, kind of follow up
from what I'm trying to talk
about, because again, I think
you're very right that as long
as, for example, white folks
hold the power and
indigenous folks don't,
and white people are
saying, oh, let's mine
some great ideas
from those people,
looks like they have some
ideas, let's use them.
Then yeah, you're just
going to replicate
the same kind of power dynamic.
You're not really
changing the story at all.
It really has to be a coalition
in which indigenous folks lead.
And that's going to
be really difficult.
It's a political project.
You also see this in the
US environmental movement
where [INAUDIBLE] and
other indigenous groups
are trying to fight against
resource extraction.
And the indigenous
folks are saying hey,
it's time for us
to take the lead.
It's not about you
and us helping you out
in your project.
It's about us and
how you can help us.
And changing the dynamics
of that power relationship
is going to be really hard with
the history of exploitation
and domination that we have.
So I'm not saying it's
an easy path at all.
But I think that
it's a just path.
I think that it's a path
that is more likely to create
justice both for human
groups and for nonhumans
than the existing--
we've got the power, we've
got the will to power,
and now we're going to use
it in whatever way we think
is going to be efficacious.
Thanks for that.
AUDIENCE 2: My name
is [INAUDIBLE].
I'm from the
department of biology.
You spoke very well.
Your talk was full--
just like a fountain.
It was a pleasure to
listen to your talk.
I am against any animal
killing, even small insects.
But as a biologist,
sometimes there is a line.
For example, in the nearby
town called [? Pankar, ?]
the deer population exploded.
And at the same time the
plant diversity is declining
because the deer
population-- you
know they have to
graze on something.
[INAUDIBLE] danger
of rare species.
Those species, those
plants are disappearing.
As a vegetarian, yes,
I'm against the killing.
But as a biologist you are
concerned-- horticulture,
the diversity.
And recently, just two weeks
ago I returned from India.
I traveled to many major
cities [INAUDIBLE].
In all big cities
it is very difficult
to walk late in the
nighttime because there
are a number of stray dogs.
And they threaten you.
So again, killing stray dogs
is against my consciousness,
but at one time nearly
about 20 stray dogs
attacked a [INAUDIBLE]
and killed it.
So sometimes there
is very thin line
to walk between animal
cruelty, and plant
diversity, and human safety.
Thank you.
ANGELA HARRIS: Yeah, I think I
think that's a great question.
I'm going to throw
that to Kristin,
because I think those are great
examples of the classic tension
between the environmentalist
perspective, and then
the anti-killing, or
the reverence for life,
or reverence for
animal perspective.
And it's a question I know
biologists all over the world
are struggling with.
From the individual level,
at the individual level,
you don't want to kill.
But at the species level
or the ecosystem level,
you see the destruction that's
going to happen unless there's
some kind of intervention.
And it's the inevitable fruit
of a world in which humans,
like it or not, have
taken over and we're
living in this anthropocene.
And then what are the
ethical choices that we make?
So do you have--
KRISTEN STILT: I would
just add to that,
these are the kinds of
questions that I was thinking
of with your
suggesting of returning
to the indigenous
peoples approaches.
I think people in the
animal protection movement
might feel a little
nervous about that,
because in some ways,
are we just recreating
these exact same questions,
putting it all in together,
in which cases individual
animals often lose
to species-based considerations.
And then they often
lose to human interests.
So I don't know that
we ever get away
from these kinds of
questions no matter what
framework we're operating in.
They just are very fundamental.
AUDIENCE 3: My question is,
you focused on [INAUDIBLE]
in a animal rights perspective.
Are we in [INAUDIBLE]
even if we were
to have some communities holding
the ability to represent animal
environmental
rights, there might
be essentialism that
still [INAUDIBLE]?
ANGELA HARRIS: I
think in some ways
the politics group dynamics
within justice space movements,
again, is one of these questions
that you can never fully escape
because there are
going to be conflicts,
and there are going
to be different ways
of framing the project.
So I think it's endemic
to justice movements
to have those competitions and
those conflicts and tensions.
But I would also argue
that that's inevitable,
that there's not a
way to do justice
projects without grappling
with that because the fact is,
as the animal rights and
anti-colonial [INAUDIBLE]
suggests, these movements
are all intertwined,
because often they're
working on the same logic
of subordination.
And the CRT idea
intersectionality
tells us that these
struggles are all entangled.
And so there's no way that
we can hide some of them
off and treat them as
self-contained anyway.
So it just becomes a
question of politics,
and how you do that politics.
And the aim is to find
those points of coalition
that most further the
ambitions of the groups that
are trying to work together.
And I've argued that
the PETA example
of trying to form coalitions
between people of color
and animals doesn't work.
But there is a deeper version
of that I think works better.
AUDIENCE 4: Well, I think
there is really a much broader
understanding of
animal right that
includes things like passion,
the environment, individually.
Vegetarianism is
a big par of it.
They weren't trying to convert--
but rather, trying to
raise consciousness of what
happened to animals, and to
lead people to stop using them.
But within the animal
right movement,
there are many, many
different strains--
[INAUDIBLE]
KRISTEN STILT: Maybe one more
question and then we'll stop.
AUDIENCE 5: My question is
about-- you described yourself
as a critical race,
feminist, who is also
interested in animal welfare.
I was just wondering
what the reception
is among other people
in your discipline,
for like, animal
interests, or is that like,
you feel like, [INAUDIBLE]?
How do you describe that?
ANGELA HARRIS: That's
a good question.
I definitely feel
like I'm a little bit
out there in the critical
race feminist world
because I think a lot
of folks who are working
with NCRP reflexively
have the same aversion
of the same liberal narrative
that animals are less
important than humans,
and so we should
fix the human problem first.
And then after that's
fixed, when we have justice,
then we'll think about animals.
But what I try to do with
them is the same version
of what I try to do in reverse
conversations, when I'm talking
to animal rights groups.
I try to do the same
thing with the CRT folks,
and try to unpack the
ways in which these
are not sequential struggles.
They are part of
the same struggle.
And to the extent
that we can, we
should address them together.
So that's the sense in which
I think re-framing animal
protection as an anti-colonial
movement maybe makes sense
to people in the critical
race theory world,
because once they see,
oh, this is not just
about protecting orcas, this
is about a whole different
worldview that tries to go back
to the doctrine of discovery,
and realize why that was
wrong, and to give back
indigenous lands.
Then they start to get
the intellectual projects.
So in that sense I see
myself as the go between,
trying to bring together
the CRT world that's
been very focused on humans, and
the animal rights world that's
very focused on
animals, and say,
hey, there's a lot of
common ground here.
There are ways in which
our projects converge,
and that we can work together
more effectively than we
can separately.
Thanks.
KRISTEN STILT: Than
you so much for coming.
I really appreciate it.
[APPLAUSE]
