Can we realize a liberatory world for humans and other animals without veganism as a baseline? In her second monograph, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft, Aph Ko imagines we might. There is, sadly, a considerable lack of communication between anti-racism and anti-speciesism movements, and Ko posits that this disconnect reflects the limitations of theoretical frameworks. For one, veganism is frequently depoliticized into a dietary lifestyle, largely due to corporate interests and the (perhaps intentional) mischaracterization from nonvegans.
Anti-racism activists, Ko conjectures, are not likely to find as much value in veganism as a tactic as such: “When we treat veganism as only a matter of what food one eats, it can feel as if we’re holding the key to racial liberation in our hands but only conceive of it as a spoon” (p. 8). More than this, however, she also suggests that veganism, even in its unadulterated political form, has its limitations. Veganism is not necessarily useful for conceptualizing all intersections between oppressed humans and other animals, and, furthermore, it may not speak equally to all audiences. Ko explains:
Rather than trying to smuggle all of these complex conversations about animals under the vegan label, we should get to a point in our activism where we recognize that conversations about race and animality often exceed the boundaries of vegan discourse, and that this should be celebrated rather than appropriated. (p. 30)
Veganism, in other words, may be a logic of anti-oppression, but its core emphasis relates to the rendering of nonhuman animals into products of consumption, and this framework does not always function for other oppression narratives.
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Readers can learn more about the social movement politics of Nonhuman Animal rights and veganism in my 2019 publication, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits. The beautiful cover art for this text was created by vegan artist Lynda Bell and prints are available on her website, artbylyndabell.com.
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