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Journal Articles and Book Chapters by Zipporah Weisberg

dePICTions vol. 4, Victimhood (June-July 2024)

Animals are nothing if not victims of human violence. We subject them not only to ruthless system... more Animals are nothing if not victims of human violence. We subject them not only to ruthless systemic violence through the animal industrial complex, but also to epistemic violence by reducing them to defective, elemental, and inferior forms of existence. We denigrate them, call them stupid, project our worst qualities onto them, and punish them for not being human. In this article, we explore various perspectives on animal victimhood with the modest aim of teasing out some tensions and demonstrating the need for a nuanced approach.

https://parisinstitute.org/animals-as-victims/

Liberazioni – Rivista di critica antispecista 54, pp. 37-49 / Effimera: critica e sovversioni del presente, 2023

Il movimento per la giustizia climatica, in quanto movimento per la giustizia sociale, riconosce ... more Il movimento per la giustizia climatica, in quanto movimento per la giustizia sociale, riconosce la connessione tra l’emarginazione, lo sfruttamento di gruppi umani vulnerabili e la distruzione del mondo naturale. Tuttavia, la promessa di inclusività della giustizia climatica non sembra applicarsi allo stesso modo all* altr* animali. Mentre affronta l’allevamento intensivo, l’attivismo per il clima si focalizza sull’inquinamento, le emissioni di carbonio e altri rischi ambientali associati, senza dire quasi nulla sull’indicibile sofferenza cui sono sottoposte de- cine di miliardi di esseri senzienti negli allevamenti intensivi. Questo silenzio non solo è ingiustificato, è anche controproducente. Come non può esserci giustizia climatica senza giustizia sociale, così non può esserci giustizia climatica senza giustizia per gli animali

http://www.liberazioni.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Salzani-Weisberg-lib54.pdf
https://effimera.org/non-ce-giustizia-climatica-senza-giustizia-per-gli-animali-di-zipporah-weisberg-e-carlo-salzani/

dePICTions vol. 3, Critical Ecologies, 2023

As a social justice movement, climate justice recognizes the connection between the marginalizati... more As a social justice movement, climate justice recognizes the connection between the marginalization and exploitation of vulnerable human groups and the destruction of the natural world. However, climate justice falls short of fulfilling its mandate of inclusivity when it comes to other animals. While it does address factory farming, the climate movement focuses on the pollution, carbon emissions, and other environmental hazards associated with it, hardly uttering a word about the unspeakable suffering to which tens of billions of sensitive beings are subjected in factory farms. The silence around this topic is not only unjustified but also counterproductive. Just as there can be no climate justice without social justice, there can be no climate justice without justice for animals.
At: https://parisinstitute.org/no-climate-justice-without-justice-for-animals/

dePICTions, volume 3: Critical Ecologies, 2023

In 2018, Viennese philosopher and author Fahim Amir published Schwein und Zeit: Tiere, Politik, R... more In 2018, Viennese philosopher and author Fahim Amir published Schwein und Zeit: Tiere, Politik, Revolte, urging us to rethink animal oppression in resolutely political terms. The book garnered several awards and was translated into many languages, including into English as Being and Swine: The End of Nature (As We Knew It). Part social history, part political intervention, Being and Swine provides fascinating insight into how other animals, most notably pigeons and pigs, have impacted human lives both at the micro and macro levels. Drawing on Karl Marx and other thinkers in the radical Left tradition, Amir argues that other animals are de facto political subjects and have played a central role in the history of struggle. A core argument throughout the book is that other animals are not powerless victims of human violence but political subjects capable of resistance. In his rethinking of human and nonhuman animal relations throughout modernity, Amir also asks us to interrogate the “bourgeois” concept of “nature” itself (as pure, pristine, and set apart from urban and human life) and to question our despair at “its” undoing. Perhaps, Amir suggests, if looked at through a different lens—one that focuses on the resilience and adaptability of human and nonhuman animals in the face of devastation—the situation we find ourselves in today may not seem as bleak as it might otherwise appear.
At: https://parisinstitute.org/pigeons-pigs-and-the-optimism-of-reason/

Transforming Food Systems: Ethics, Innovation, and Responsibility, 2022

Cultured meat is increasingly being touted by animal industry players and leading animal advocate... more Cultured meat is increasingly being touted by animal industry players and leading animal advocates alike as a viable alternative to flesh from slaughtered animals. At first glance, cultured meat, which is made from stem cells collected from ostensibly harmless biopsies of living animals and grown in vats, seems like a logical and even ingenious solution to the otherwise seemingly insurmountable problem of balancing the growing global demand for animal flesh with urgent concerns surrounding the massive environmental and animal welfare costs intrinsic to industrial animal food production. Unfortunately, however, upon closer examination it quickly becomes clear that this optimism is unfounded: cultured meat is far from a panacea to the ills inherent to animal agriculture. In fact, by working hand-in-hand with some of the biggest food corporations and meat producers to develop and promote cultured meat, and by shifting focus away from the development of sustainable plant-based alternatives to animal protein, the cultured meat project perpetuates those very ills.

Animal Liberation Currents, 2018

Association for the Study of (Ethical Behavior)•(Evolutionary Biology) in Literature, 2019

In her chapter, Zipporah Weisberg advances a Left humanist approach as an alternative to liberal ... more In her chapter, Zipporah Weisberg advances a Left humanist approach as an alternative to liberal positions currently employed to tackle nonhuman animals’ issues. Left humanism, Weisberg proposes, can be seen as a direct response to the dehumanization and de-animalization of the subject common to late capitalist societies. As Weisberg notices, humanism has traditionally been one of the main contributors to the continuous disregard and violence towards nonhuman animals. Yet, once freed of its anthropocentrism, Weisberg maintains, Left humanism could be an effective and inclusive way of considering nonhuman animals and the issues they face.

NanoEthics, 2015

I argue in this paper that animal biotechnology constitutes a dangerous ontological collapse betw... more I argue in this paper that animal biotechnology constitutes a dangerous ontological collapse between animals and the technical-economic apparatus. By ontological collapse, I mean the elimination of fundamental ontological tensions between embodied subjects and the principles of scientific, technological, and economic rationalization. Biotechnology imposes this collapse in various ways: by genetically "reprogramming" animals to serve as uniform commodities, by abstracting them into data and code, and, in some cases, by literally manipulating their movements with computer technologies. These and other forms of ontological violence not only lead to profound physical suffering for the animals involved, but also distort the phenomenological basis of their existence, especially their perceptual experience and expression of subjective time and space. In subordinating nonhuman animals to the logic of "technological rationality" or "technique," to borrow Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Ellul's respective terms, biotechnology perpetuates the productive extermination of animals. Biotech animals are exterminated in the sense of being "drive[n] beyond the boundaries" of meaningful existence and "destroyed completely" or "completely wiped out" as subjects. But they are also exterminated in the sense of being "overproduced" and "overgenerated," both quantitatively and qualitatively. I go on to argue that the collapse of the ontological is accompanied by a collapse of the ethical. This ethical collapse is characterized by the internalization of the logic of technique and the corresponding failure both within technoscientific culture itself and within some scholarly discourses about biotechnology to evaluate from a genuinely critical vantage point the fundamental ethical issues that animal biotechnology raises. The aim of this paper is to offer an alternative analysis of the ontological and ethical implications of biotechnology from the standpoint of Marcuse and Ellul's critical theory of technology. To explore other ramifications of animal biotechnology, I draw on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's insights into ideologies of extermination and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodiment.

ASEBL Journal, 2019

A critical response to Shawn Thompson's "Supporting Ape Rights: Finding the Right Fit between Sci... more A critical response to Shawn Thompson's "Supporting Ape Rights: Finding the Right Fit between Science and the Law"

I argue in this paper that animal biotechnology constitutes a dangerous ontological collapse be... more I argue in this paper that animal biotechnology
constitutes a dangerous ontological collapse between
animals and the technical-economic apparatus. By ontological
collapse, I mean the elimination of fundamental
ontological tensions between embodied subjects and
the principles of scientific, technological, and economic
rationalization. Biotechnology imposes this collapse in
various ways: by genetically “reprogramming” animals
to serve as uniform commodities, by abstracting them
into data and code, and, in some cases, by literally
manipulating their movements with computer technologies.
These and other forms of ontological violence not
only lead to profound physical suffering for the animals
involved, but also distort the phenomenological basis of
their existence, especially their perceptual experience
and expression of subjective time and space. In subordinating
nonhuman animals to the logic of “technological
rationality” or “technique,” to borrow Herbert Marcuse
and Jacques Ellul’s respective terms, biotechnology
perpetuates the productive extermination of animals.
Biotech animals are exterminated in the sense of being
“drive[n] beyond the boundaries” of meaningful existence
and “destroyed completely” or “completely wiped
out” as subjects. But they are also exterminated in the
sense of being “overproduced” and “overgenerated,”
both quantitatively and qualitatively. I go on to argue that
the collapse of the ontological is accompanied by a
collapse of the ethical. This ethical collapse is characterized
by the internalization of the logic of technique and
the corresponding failure both within technoscientific
culture itself and within some scholarly discourses about
biotechnology to evaluate from a genuinely critical vantage
point the fundamental ethical issues that animal
biotechnology raises. The aim of this paper is to offer
an alternative analysis of the ontological and ethical
implications of biotechnology from the standpoint of
Marcuse and Ellul’s critical theory of technology. To
explore other ramifications of animal biotechnology, I
draw on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s insights
into ideologies of extermination and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment.

“The Trouble with Posthumanism.” In Thinking The Unthinkable: New Readings in Critical Animal Studies, edited by John Sorenson, 93-116. Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2014.

“Animal Repression: Speciesism as Pathology.” In Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, edited by John Sanbonmatsu, 177-194. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011.

her early scholarly deconstruction of primatology in Primate Visions (1989) where, among other th... more her early scholarly deconstruction of primatology in Primate Visions (1989) where, among other things, she pointed out the relationship between misogyny, anthropocentrism, sadism and modern humanism. 3 More recently, in texts such as Companion Species Manifesto (2003) and When Species Meet (2008), Haraway has engaged more directly with Animal Studies than in her earlier work. Here, against what she regards as the violent legacy of humanism, she attempts to develop what she terms "nonhumanism" (When Species Meet 92). At the center of nonhumanism, and forming the pivot on which her critique of humanism turns, is her theory of "companion species."

Book Reviews by Zipporah Weisberg

Society and Animals, 2024

Book Review (In)Visible Subjects: A Review of Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory. Cary, C. an... more Book Review
(In)Visible Subjects: A Review of Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory.
Cary, C. and L. Gruen (2022).

Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory. Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA: Polity Press. 176 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4967-2; ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4968-9 (pb). Price: Hardback: US 64.95;Paperback:US64.95; Paperback: US 64.95;Paperback:US23.95; Ebook: US $18.00