VI.
The current political program or paradigm
that is of utmost concern for any animal (or “animalized”) ethics must be the
contemporary discourse on “animal rights,” which, as it continues to grow in
global influence, has begun to operate as a covert form of imperialism that
cannot, as it is currently formulated, solve the problem of human-animal
relation. It is especially relevant for the present study that many advocates
for animal rights specifically target China as a site of many violations of
such hypothetical rights. Miyun Park and Peter Singer, two well-known activists
for animal liberation, have recently published an article on the globalization
of animal welfare initiatives by NGOs and anonymous collectives and have
sounded an unequivocal call for international measures and regulations—similar
to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights—to combat cruelty, especially
in Asian countries like China;[i]
and, in a related editorial written for Project Syndicate, Singer specifically condemns the prevalence of
animal cruelty in China, where dominant cultural attitudes remain largely
unmoved by (if not formally critical of) the appeals of animal welfare
activists, and where currently there are no national laws protecting captured
animals from torture and cruelty.[ii]
While
I agree that incidences of animal cruelty—at home and abroad—must be addressed
by a global, collective activism, I have serious objections to the particular
solution proffered by Singer and Park. What I find problematic in their
argumentation is the notion that the legislation of animal life is the only or
even the best possible solution to the prevalence of animal cruelty and the
devaluing of animal life; a problem of ethical and practical importance always
arises when one grounds an appeal to collective action in a reductive
legalistic or juridical framework, for this tactic increases activists’
reliance on state-power and entrenches the world further into the biopolitical
paradigm of modern liberal democracies. Furthermore, while juridical frameworks
based in rights are capable of punishing infractions, they have proven again
and again to be incapable of preventing such infractions from occurring, as the
numerous and continued infractions of “human rights” by multinational
corporations and state governments have demonstrated.
Instead, to ground a global, collective resistance to animal
cruelty, one might, as I have argued, (re)turn to classical texts with the
current context in mind—and, furthermore, one should not only examine texts
that belong to the Western tradition to which Derrida and Agamben subscribe and
subvert, but one should make use of a plurality of texts from Asian traditions
as well. This essay has looked at texts from three classical Chinese
philosophical traditions—the School of Names (Gongsun Longzi), Confucianism
(the Analects, Xunzi, and Mengzi), and
Daoism (Zhuangzi)—of which the latter
two schools have retained some influence in contemporary China and continue to
shape (and be shaped by) East Asia’s intellectual landscape. Furthermore, I
have argued that Daoist or proto-Daoist teachings about humans and animals as
preserved in the Zhuangzi may provide
a more suitable ethical framework for a new politics of human-animal relation.
Thus, even though Bai Tongdong argues that the basic premise of Confucianism is
an expansion of compassion “to eventually encompass everything in the universe,
including animals,” he admits that obligations to other humans necessarily
override similar obligations to animals.[iii]
Confucius himself summarizes the anthropocentric orientation of Confucian
thought in the Analects, when Zigong,
a disciple, seeks to spare the sacrifice of a sheep at a certain ceremony and
Confucius reproaches him by saying, “You grudge the sheep—I, ritual propriety”
(3.17). In the final analysis, when the care of the animal is entrusted to the
state, it cannot but lead to
sacrifice, whether to a deity or, bloodlessly, to the will of law itself.
[i] Miyun Park and Peter Singer, “The Globalization of Animal Wellfare,” Foreign Affairs 91.2 (2012), n.p.
[ii] Peter Singer, “Moral Progress and Animal Welfare,” Project Syndicate, July 13, 2011,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/moral-progress-and-animal-welfare
(accessed April 10, 2012). In the editorial, Singer cites footage which has circulated online,
footage that includes the extraction of bile from caged bears for medicinal
purposes and furred animals being skinned alive. A documentary produced for Al
Jazeera features images similar to the ones Singer describes. The documentary
goes on to say that the animal rights or animal welfare movement in China is
most prevalent in larger cities, where such footage has spurred various popular
movements across the country to combat what they see as infractions of animal
rights. See Al Jazeera, “China’s animal crusaders,” Al Jazeera 101 East, July 12, 2011, 20:00ff.,
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2011/07/20117129224537494.html
(accessed April 10, 2012).
[iii] Bai, “The Price of Serving Meat,” 94.
