Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Speaking of Animal Bodies"
Indeed, the animal rights movement itself was catapulted to respectability, insofar as it has been, only when white male philosophers distanced themselves from kindness, empathy, or care, and theorized about the motives for animal liberation as legitimated by recourse to animal rights (Regan) or attention to animal suffering (Singer). Nearly thirty years later, Cary Wolfe echoes the Singer/Regan era in his claim that 'taking animals seriously thus has nothing to do, strictly speaking, with whether or not you like animals.
Sounds like some infighting is going on here! Greta Gaard (do her friends call her GG?) is analyzing some of the internal politics of animal studies. But this isn't just about naval-gazing—these kinds of debates can really matter. Here the issue is the importance of early feminist animal studies theorists to the contemporary field of animal studies.
Gaard points out that animal studies begins with feminist ideas about how we should relate to and think about animals—through an ethics of care, through empathy, and kindness. She's arguing that these ideas, considered "soft" or less serious than the "rights" arguments of people like Peter Singer, have been give short shrift and ignored.
Carey Wolfe has claimed that this whole idea of taking animals seriously should have nothing to do with whether we like animals. You might dislike animals—all those pesky dogs pooping all over the sidewalk, you know?—but you still have to pay attention to them and consider the repercussions of animals and animality. How we understand animality ain't just all about the critters. It impacts all of our ideas about how human beings work, how our society works.