Science clearly shows that numerous nonhuman animals (animals) are sentient, feeling beings who care about their own well-being and quality of life along with that of their family and friends. For decades we’ve known that numerous animals’ inner lives are complex, rich, and deep, and a new anthology called Animals as Experiencing Entities: Theories and Historical Narratives edited by Drs. Michael J. Glover and Les Mitchell makes the inarguable case that it’s high time to use what we know on their behalf and allow them to live safely and to flourish in a shared world. I couldn't agree more with the important messages in this landmark book and here's what Michael and Les had to say about this most valuable, wide-ranging, and inclusive collection of essays.
Marc Bekoff: Why did you edit Animals as Experiencing Entities?
Michael Glover and Les Mitchell: Animal history has been evolving for the last four decades, but with a few exceptions, animals’ subjective historical experiences have not been included in animal history1. In a way, the living, feeling, sentient animals are missing in animal history. We wanted to validate animals’ experiences and remember what really happened to them. Sometimes, capturing their experiences is fragmentary and even speculative, but in other cases, it’s quite clear what type of experiences they would have had. This is because we can credibly know the context of the historical situation and also the nature of animals’ experiential capacities.
MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?
LM: Fortunately, we have diverse academic interests and backgrounds. For me, they are life sciences, community health, education, and critical discourse analysis, especially related to the social construction of animals. I am a very keen hiker.
MG: My background is in philosophy and history. I grew up 1 km from a nature reserve with zebras, vervet monkeys, caracals, duikers, myriad birds, and many insects. So, for a long time, I’ve been attuned to animals as beings with their own lives and experiences. My Ph.D. was on cattle’s subjective experiences of colonialism.
MB: How did you choose your contributors?
MG/LM: Animal experiences are complex. The implications of validating animal experiences are diverse. So, we wanted diverse approaches and a mix of theory and history. We wanted authors who would be willing to contemplate and write respectfully, credibly, and insightfully about animals’ experiences. We were also fortunate that our, colleagues, associates, and friends helped us to find what we felt was the crew our volume needed.
MB: Who do you hope to reach in your interesting and important book?
MG/LM: Historians, ethnographers, ethologists, life scientists, critical animal studies researchers, animal advocates, policymakers, and anyone interested in animals as experiencing beings.
MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?
MG/LM: When philosopher Jonathan Birch recently reviewed Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, he noted that humanity’s maltreatment of animals is probably not so much about speciesism (a wrongful prejudice against animals based on their not being human) but “from failing to respect other animals as sentient beings with lives of their own.” So we really wanted to drive home the point that animals are sentient individuals with their own lives, emotions, experiences, and sensory systems, who, like us humans, are just trying to live well and want to flourish. It’s easier to respect animals' lives if we become curious about and validate their lives as intrinsically valuable. So, in a way, it’s about giving content to the recognition that animals are sentient entities with their own lives.
It’s a diverse anthology, with two parts. The first theorises about the inner lives of animals. The second looks at historical narratives that include animals’ experiences. Our authors cover the formation of animals’ cultural and emotional selves, animal grief as an organismic response, the phenomenology of individual animal pain in context, animal standpoint theory, animals’ sensory histories, a poetic essay about cattle history according to cattle, the designation of great animal massacres in history with a focus on the 1920 crow massacre of colonial Rangoon, the lives of chimpanzees Rose and Kambi, captured in French Guinea and used as research objects, animals’ agency in colonial archives, a method for non-anthropocentric legal views of animal cases, and finally a critical account of the likely experiences British pit ponies endured from 1700 to mid-1960s.
MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?
MG/LM: What distinguishes this book is that it’s animal history that includes experiencing animals. And there’s an emphasis on theory. Historians have been coy and even trepid about including animals’ subjective historical experiences. But they needn’t be, and animals deserve inclusion in how we remember and understand the past. So, we want to make space for the living, feeling, and experiencing animals in history. Novelists like Eben Venter and J.M. Coetzee have often done better than historians when writing about animals as feeling subjects, and their writing enables empathy for animals and we hope our anthology does the same.
We make the point that human elitism has been a significant obstacle, along with the danger of authors being accused of “anthropomorphism,” even if fully supported by evidence and reasoned argument. This intimidation has long had a chilling effect on research as well as on researchers and their career choices. We hope this volume will both encourage and support our colleagues.
MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about agency in animals they will be more open to allow them to be freer to make choices they prefer?
MGl: The scale of harm animals suffer is normalised and queasy-making. It’s legal to kill animals in almost every single jurisdiction on earth. But, like us, animals just want to be safe and secure, to meet their needs in many cases those of their young and kin, and to be well and enjoy their lives. The more curious and attuned one becomes to animals’ capabilities, sensory systems, and social lives, the more astonishing, enchanting, and miraculous they can appear in one's consciousness and the more likely we’ll recognise and respect their will to flourish. The more we understand animals, the more empathetic we can become towards them.
LM: In order to morally disengage (Bandura) from taking responsibility for the harm we have done and continually do to animals, our societies often construct them as objects, lower beings, or at least as fulfilling a role for which they are “naturally” intended, such as “pack horses” or “experimental animals.” But understanding animals as having inner lives and experiencing the world as sentient individuals, as being somebody (Regan), causes this self-deception to erode. We hope our volume might make some contribution towards this process and support changes in attitudes and the actions which can follow.
References
In conversation with Michael Glover, a lifetime Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, a member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Free State, and Les Mitchell, Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and Research Associate at the University of the Free State.
1) How Animals Reshaped Cultures on Both Sides of the Atlantic; As Food Animals Became "Things," Their Feelings Were Ignored; It’s Time To Stop Wondering if Animals Are Sentient—They Are; Beastly: The Entangled History of Animals and Us; A Historical Perspective on Studies of Animal Emotions; Art for Animals: Its Historical Significance for Advocacy.
Animals as Experiencing Entities: Theories and Historical Narratives.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
visit website
