Is there a causal connection between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans? Does human justice require discarding the traditional hierarchy that values humans before nonhumans? …. Coetzee's fiction reveals how sympathetic identification with animals can be symptomatic of selfishness and political impotence. A sense of equality with animals does not necessarily translate into care for animals or for humans. What is more, the protagonists' equation of animal suffering with human suffering risks perpetuating a racist discourse that equates humans with animals--racist discourse that has resulted in profound human suffering. Coetzee's writing resists the equation of human and animal oppression.
…from:
"Ethics and the Nonhuman: J.M. Coetzee's Lives of Animals and Disgrace"
by Katherine Hallemeier, in "Humans and Animals," Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, Spring 2007
30 May 2007
causal connection between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans?
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