Lauren Corman

This chapter puts the torture and subsequent trauma resulting from the human experiments at the now infamous Oak Ridge psychiatric facility— a maximum security forensic hospital— in conversation with the torture and subsequent trauma resulting from PTSD (post- traumatic stress disorder) animal experiments. I draw on Dinesh Wadiwel’s use of Agamben’s notion of a “zone of legal exception” and his discussion of “black sites” to trace the cycle of trauma as it loops onto and reproduces itself. Wadiwel (2017) argues, “The ‘black site’ as a concept offers an imaginary for a space of social, political and juridical exception that hides extensive and intense violence against those who are captured within this zone of confinement” (p. 391).

This chapter asks critical animal studies scholars, intersectional nonhuman animal advocates, and anyone who recognizes that profit drives the overwhelming majority of violence against other animals to take seriously their exploitation while refusing to reduce nonhuman animal subjectivities to representations of suffering and victimization. This kind of beyond suffering approach, which some advocates and scholars may see as fiddling while Rome burns, is a necessary antidote to capitalist objectification of nonhuman animals. That said, suffering should not be dismissed or neglected in efforts to end exploitation. Rather, we must discuss suffering, but we should do so in conjunction with other, richer versions of other animals' experiences beyond suffering. This including but beyond suffering approach strongly resonates with other social justice movements that have long resisted both the homogenization and the reductionism of various subjects to pure victims. These movements, which have fought hard against dehumanization, recognize that objectification manifests as denial of full or even partial subjectivity and thus exclusion from the realm of full humanity.

2016. In J. Castricano and L. Corman (Eds.) Animal Subjects 2.0. (pp. 243-512). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

“The Ventriloquist’s Burden: Animal Advocacy and the Problem of Speaking for Others,” addresses animals and representation, particularly debates about voice appropriation and the politics of voice. Concerned with the hubris potentially implied in advocates’ use of the voice metaphor (through phrases such as “the voice of the voiceless”), Corman argues that insights evidenced within certain pockets of animal activism, cognitive ethology, posthumanism, and—crucially—other social movements and theories can help mitigate the challenges of animals’ political representation. These approaches stress richer versions of subjectivity that include, but extend beyond, representations of victimization and suffering.

Grappling with voice metaphor and the problem of speaking for others, Corman considers how voice in its political register (as opposed to its strictly compositional or literary form) tends to highlight non-unitary subjectivity, notions of resistance, valuation of experiential knowledge, and relationality. These “dynamics of political voice” name subjects’ pain and suffering, while they refuse to reduce or flatten Others’ subjectivities to pure victimization. Such recognition helps unsettle the humanism involved in advocates’ political representation of other animals, as we increasingly shift away from discourses of heroism to ones of (attempted) solidarity.

A Spanish version of my Animal Voices interview with Sociologist David Nibert, "Cows, Colonialism, and Capitalism" (tran. Hajime Espinosa) published in the Latin American Journal of Critical Animals Studies. Translated by Hajime Espinosa.

Well-known within the animal movements as the author of Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation, Dr. David Nibert is a professor of Sociology at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Historically grounded, and passionately argued, Nibert’s theory contends that oppression is primarily underpinned by economic gain and supported by state ideology. His scholarship offers both an economic analysis of oppression, including animal oppression, and a strong call for socialism. Beyond simply considering the roles animals have played within human society, significantly, Nibert also attempts to account for animals’ experiences and perspectives throughout history.

His recent paper entitled “Cows, Profits, and Genocide: The Oppressive Side of ‘Beef’ Consumption,” recently presented at Brock’s “Thinking about Animals: Domination, Captivity, Liberation” conference, carries forward Nibert’s economic critique through a sustained case study. Focusing on capitalism, colonialism, and their intimate connection to the exploitation of cows, Nibert explores how the colonization of the Americas was intertwined with the growth of the “beef” industry. Provocatively, he ties his historical insights into contemporary examples: “The entangled oppression of devalued humans and cows is most obvious today in Brazil and the Darfur region in western Sudan — where murder and displacement are tied to the expansion of the profitable ‘beef industry.'”

Freire’s influential text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, relies on both anthropocentric and speciesist arguments to articulate a pedagogy for human liberation. While Freire’s anthropocentric understandings of “nature” have been more thoroughly critiqued, less attention has been given to his construction of nonhuman animals, in particular. I argue that Freire figures nonhuman animals in three main ways: as non-communicative and non-dialogical, as non-agential and non-transforming, and as without history or culture. Within his pedagogical paradigm, humans alone are understood as Subjects who can achieve liberation. Freire strategically uses the figure of the animal to highlight human potentiality, which is realized by transcending an oppressed/Object/animal state. My critique of Freire is meant to complement humane and critical environmental education approaches that draw on his work.

Freegans and raccoons experience social and cultural vilification within North America.  Rather than separate phenomena, there is a distinct interdependence of discourses relating to humanity and animality that inform popular constructions of these human and nonhuman urban foragers.  Discourses related to pests, vermin, and dirt potently combine with others about social delinquency, race, and class.  Adjacently, maintenance of urban civility and garbage containment is threatened by the physical and symbolic disruption of “trash”, refigured by freegans and raccoons as food. Western consumption patterns and their excesses are made visible by urban foraging. Such behaviors help inspire questions not only about conventional capitalist foodways but also the problematics of green consumerism.

Essay on vivisection, resistance, and empathy published as part of the liner notes for the documentary Maximum Tolerated Dose, "A look inside modern animal experimentation with the animals who lived through it and the people who walked away.“

This contemporary social theory course takes conversation as its central metaphor and critical thinking as its guiding principle. As such, the course can be understood as a set of conversations among those who critically analyse social phenomena. The authors featured both attempt to illuminate and to intervene in various social relationships and practices, particularly with the intent of challenging the status quo and various " common sense " assumptions. These key theorists offer a broad survey of perspectives that are relevant to contemporary critical sociology, often directly referencing each other's work in the development of their ideas. In other words, contemporary social theory is constantly evolving, opening up new ways of thinking about social and political phenomena. As Michel Foucault, social theorist and historian of ideas, states, " I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me. " The featured theories are typically directed toward various forms of resistance and anti-oppression struggle. Students are invited to actively participate in the unfolding conversation, directing a critical gaze toward the theories while also cultivating increasing self-reflexivity and a more incisive social analysis. PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE: The purpose of this course is to provide a survey of contemporary social theory, and to contextualize the authors and theories within various social, political, and historical contexts. In lecture, emphasis is placed on the biography of the theorists, highlighting them as individuals who were or are also embedded in numerous contexts that inform the evolution of their ideas. Further, the course aims to show the applicability of these