Happy meals : animals, nature, and the myth of consent
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In describing man as an "animal rationale, " Aristotle argued for a "myth of consent, " i.e. that slaves, barbarians, women, and animals have all "agreed" to be owned and controlled by Greek male citizens for their own "protection." Therefore, there are two main themes in Aristotelian thought in the original definition of man, which became inscribed in later thinkers. The first is that the exclusion of the slave, and later of the colonized, as biological inferiors is rendered possible in part because of these pre-existing caesuras in politics, ethics, and philosophy which exclude animals, women, and slaves, based on their shared equation with the human body and supposed lack of reason. And second, this domination is justified via a rhetoric of care and benevolent protection. Based on a critique of this "myth of consent, " in the first half of the dissertation I argue that the practices of "locavorism, " "humane slaughter, " and being a "compassionate carnivore" obscure the reality of the death and suffering that such practices entail. I argue that the effect of the so-called "humane farming" movement is not a critique of anthropocentric privilege, but instead the restatement and re-entrenchment of the most basic claims of the factory farm system. In the second half of the dissertation, I explore the "myth of consent" for marginalized populations which have been oppressed, in part, based on a supposed belief in the need to "protect" them (even when this "protection" involves their death) as well as a belief in their supposed "animalistic" nature. Underlying all of these arguments, I argue that that the question "what is man?" (as opposed to the animal) is not a question philosophy should attempt to answer, but a power dynamic that we should, instead, seek to critique.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Stănescu, Vasile |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Modern Thought and Literature. |
| Primary advisor | Fishkin, Shelley Fisher |
| Primary advisor | Heise, Ursula K |
| Thesis advisor | Fishkin, Shelley Fisher |
| Thesis advisor | Heise, Ursula K |
| Thesis advisor | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Advisor | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Vasile Stanescu. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Modern Thought and Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Vasile Stanescu
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