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Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project

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Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues

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Abstract

In her chapter, Zipporah Weisberg advances a Left humanist approach as an alternative to liberal positions currently employed to tackle nonhuman animals’ issues. Left humanism, Weisberg proposes, can be seen as a direct response to the dehumanization and de-animalization of the subject common to late capitalist societies. As Weisberg notices, humanism has traditionally been one of the main contributors to the continuous disregard and violence towards nonhuman animals. Yet, once freed of its anthropocentrism, Weisberg maintains, Left humanism could be an effective and inclusive way of considering nonhuman animals and the issues they face.

While the problem of humanization has always…been humankind’s central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern.

Paolo Freire (2011, p.43)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Animal Equality 2016, Food. Available from: http://www.animalequality.net/food

  2. 2.

    Animal Equality 2016, Experimentation. Available from: http://www.animalequality.net/animal-experimentation

  3. 3.

    Animal Equality 2016, Entertainment. Available from: http://www.animalequality.net/entertainment

  4. 4.

    For a preliminary foray into the pluses and minuses of humanism from an animal liberation perspective, see Weisberg, Z., 2014, The Trouble with Posthumanism: Bacteria are People too, in Thinking the Unthinkable: New Readings in Critical Animal Studies, ed., J. Sorenson, Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, pp.93–116. A number of themes taken up in that earlier piece are returned to and developed here.

  5. 5.

    For a detailed examination of these and other animal studies theorists’ critiques of humanism, see Weisberg, 2014, pp.94–98.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Scholar, Granada, Spain

    Zipporah Weisberg

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  1. Zipporah Weisberg
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Correspondence to Zipporah Weisberg .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Independent Researcher, Huntly, Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom

    Andrew Woodhall

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade

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Weisberg, Z. (2017). Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project. In: Woodhall, A., Garmendia da Trindade, G. (eds) Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54549-3_6

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