Why I Became Vegan (Part 4/4)

IV. Suffering Bodies

I have characterized my own choice to become vegan as a response to the Other, but more than that it is a response to the body—my body and the Other’s body—undelimited by any conceptualization of “the human” or “the animal.” So, to follow my above discussion of the political aspect of this choice, I will conclude with a discussion of the importance of the body and the irreducibly physical dimension to veganism/vegetarianism.

With regard to our ethical responsibility toward animals, Jeremy Bentham famously wrote, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” If we could unburden Bentham’s statement from his consequentialist/utilitarian perspective (a rehabilitative reading ably performed by Derrida in The Animal That Therefore I Am), what we would have left is an evocation of the shared vulnerability of all life and life-systems, a shared vulnerability that places humans, animals, and ecosystems on the same ground ethically, regardless of ontological constructions or epistemological categories: for everything that exists has the inherent ability to be destroyed.

In Philosophy and Animal Life, this realization is central to Cora Diamond’s essay: “The awareness we each have of being a living body, being ‘alive to the world’, carries with it exposure to the bodily sense of vulnerability to death, sheer animal vulnerability, the vulnerability we share with them” (74). In other words, using reason and rationality to arrive at our (ethical) choices is merely a deflection from the raw experience of lived reality, by which I mean the reality of our bodies, of our embodied experience as living beings. I don’t “inhabit” this body. I—what I call “I”—am this body. Furthermore, this body that I am can suffer and is infinitely destructible; when you destroy this body, you will always find something more to destroy. And can I live knowing this and continue to eat animals, whose suffering and destruction for the sake of human interests exposes me not only to the animals’ vulnerability but forces me to remember my own? No. I simply cannot forget, and I cannot deny the face that these Other animals present to me, this face whose suffering transforms my being.

So veganism and vegetarianism are not reducible to ethical reasoning alone but are sites in which my obligations toward the Other are transformed by our encounter, in which my own interests—my own selfishness, my construction of myself as an autonomous and impermeable being—are interrupted. And I realize that I can no longer eat meat or any food containing animal byproducts.

Perhaps it is just this sort of transformative realization to which Derrida attests in The Animal That Therefore I Am, when he writes, “The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins here” (29). The second sentence of this commonly quoted passage is purposefully vague. Does Derrida say that it is in this specific circumstance that thinking, for him, begins (again)? Or is the statement prescriptive—thinking should, perhaps, begin (again) here?  Or, we could ask, Where is the “here” that thinking begins? In his mind? Or the cat’s? And does thinking really “begin” here? Or does it, in fact, endure a particular paroxysm?

When I look into an animal’s eyes, when I see myself being looked at by another animal, I am reminded of how fragile everything is, including the boundary that I set between myself and this animal, this real, living animal. To draw this boundary, to be complicit with it, to maintain it for whatever reason, is violent and enacts violence, not only to animals but to humans as well. We know this. For any concept of what it means to be “human” will necessarily exclude from its ranks countless humans—as the disasters of the twentieth century and our own time firmly attest—just as any concept of “the animal” is used to enable further destruction.

Yet no matter what cognitive or linguistic abilities may be used to set us apart, our shared fragility will disturb any epistemo-ontological boundary.

The animal and I can be destroyed. Thinking begins here.

May 30-June 3, 2012

Why I Became Vegan (Part 3/4)

III. Denegation and Negotiation

There is another reason why veganism is better characterized as an embodied sensibility rather than a conclusion to the ethical project, and it is that vegans and vegetarians cannot avoid doing violence (or being complicit with preexisting patterns of violence) to animals, as well as to life and its ecosystems more generally. As Jacques Derrida helpfully reminds us in an interview, “Vegetarians, too, partake of animals, even of men. They practice a different mode of denegation.” This statement speaks volumes to the pretensions of “ethical veganism/vegetarianism,” and it can be elaborated in several ways. For consideration of time and space, I will draw out two (interrelated) implications of the statement, one concrete and the other abstract.

The concrete implication. The current mode of production and our economic system are based on exploitation of labor—human and animal labor—as well as the subjugation of nature and life to the cravings of the market. On this fact it is pointless to disagree. And this super-structural violence necessarily reproduces itself in the production of all food, not just in the more obvious case of the meat produced in factory farms. Though it is not comfortable to consider, the land and labor required for the cultivation of domesticated crops at the center of vegan and vegetarian diets is an ecological disturbance, one that causes the deaths of countless forms of life—not only of the crops themselves, but of insects, other invertebrates, and smaller mammals. Furthermore, farms rely on the physical labor (and therefore on the suffering and exploitation) of many human and animal workers. Thus, vegetarians and vegans, too, partake of animals and of humans. It is sheer ideology to think that a simple change in diet can change this fact, can make one guiltless before an Other’s face.

The abstract implication. At the same time that he acknowledges these more concrete patterns of institutionalized violence against humans, animals, and ecosystems, Derrida references a dimension of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical thought. For Derrida, following Levinas, our confrontation or interaction with the Other always entails some measure of violence, antagonism, power. This is not to suggest that it is acceptable for things remain the way they are or that we attempt to revert to some imagined pastoral past—indeed, as Derrida and Levinas would insist, we must change, for we can minimize this violence. But, in the final analysis, it will not do to think that we can rid ourselves completely of this violence simply by evoking an alternative economic paradigm. Even if we were to replace the current economic system with a more just one, even if our current mode of production were to be replaced, our encounters with our Other animals would retain the ineradicable trace of this violence.

If Derrida is right—and I believe that, in this case, he is essentially correct—it simply will not do for honest vegans and vegetarians to deny the existence of a violence with which they are always already complicit, a violence that their continued existence, in fact, calls for, necessitates. Therefore, veganism or vegetarianism would be more rightly understood as an embodied sensibility. If we wish to emphasize the ethical dimension of our choice, it will require a new ethical vocabulary, one that does not evoke some telos or notion of moral truth but instead positions veganism and vegetarianism as an embodied response to what we have decided is an impermissible violence enacted against human and nonhuman animals alike as well as to the various ecosystems to which they belong and in which they participate.

And here, again, Spinoza’s work on ethics, especially when read alongside that of Derrida and Levinas, is particularly useful. Veganism is not the termination of a predictable program or calculation that we mindlessly perform but is rather an intellectually enriching movement practiced concurrently with other radical pursuits. It is, at bottom, a way of relating to the world, a way of relating that attempts to minimize the damage I cause, even as I allow myself to be transformed by this encounter with an Other animal.

Why I Became Vegan (Part 2/4)

II. The Question(s) of Ethics

When people ask, or, more often, demand, to know why I became vegan, an immediate (but ultimately inadequate) response would be “for ethical reasons.” I can generally make myself understood to other people when I evoke ethics, but because it is not the whole truth, it is not the response I like to give.

It is not the whole truth because it dangerously grants vegans and vegetarians a kind of “purity” or moral superiority over other people. In fact, this is a common theme amongst many vegans and vegetarians, and it is difficult to think of anything more agitating to me personally than when “fellow” vegans think that they know what is “right” or “good” and that, therefore, everyone who doesn’t follow their practice is “wrong” or “evil.” In this formulation, veganism/vegetarianism ceases to be an ethical practice and becomes an ideology. This is a form of veganism that deserves to be criticized. By saying this, I do not mean that the ethical question should be dismissed, or that it is dismissible. But it is imperative that vegans and vegetarians stop producing such dogmatic claims to absolute moral truth.

For this reason, I want to begin to unwork some of the more problematic assumptions embedded in ideological veganism/vegetarianism. I would argue instead that ethical justifications for veganism are often either misunderstood or, quite frankly, insipid—that they can, and indeed do, work against the political relevance of being vegan. Saying this may put me at odds with many vegans, and it may seem patently absurd to meat-eaters. This is understandable. However, I hope I offer a gift that “ethical vegans” may come to appreciate, and, furthermore, something of a response to the perennial question of the meat-eating reader—a response that will serve to generate critical thought rather than end it.

First, we must ask, What is “ethics”? In the previous section, I noted that becoming vegan greatly increased my happiness. For this reason, the decision could be considered “ethical,” if when we say “ethics” we use Spinoza’s well-known definition of ethics as an induction into what constitutes “happy life,” that is to say an intellectually flourishing life.

For Spinoza, to ask, What is an ethical life? is the same as asking, What is a happy life? or, What does it mean for me to be happy? Thus, Spinoza wrestled the practice of ethics from the starchy domains of morality and philosophy and returned it to its proper place, praxis. Ethics is not dependent on the expectations placed upon the subject by the various political or religious institutions or organizations to which she belongs, or to which she is said to belong, or to which she is told she must belong, or to which she is made to belong (though, realistically speaking, this is not to say that the two are unrelated for most people). Ethics pertains, simply enough, to happiness. Of course, this is not actually a definition qua definition (that is, in the final, conclusive sense of the word “definition”). Spinoza’s definition simply adds a new density to the way we think ethics and, more importantly, the way we do ethics, by focusing on the question of happiness, which we are now invited to consider along with the question of ethics.

But here we are also confronted by the unique limitations of ethics as they are currently theorized in modernity, especially in the analytic tradition of the English-speaking West. Any given ethical problem, when broached in a university classroom or by armchair ethicists, is practically required to present itself to us fundamentally as a calculable, controllable choice between two (or more) actions. This is a way of practicing ethics that I reject, because, to put it frankly, this brand of ethics rejects me—it rejects my specificity as a spatiotemporally singular being whose daily circumstances and interactions cannot be reduced to a formula; it rejects me and you and, indeed, everyone as historical agents who live in a dis-ordered world but are nevertheless called upon to make decisions (sometimes invisible decisions) every day.

Jacques Derrida’s notion of undecidability is crucial, then, as it relates, especially in his later writings, to the ethical question. An ethical life cannot be reduced to a single, one-time choice between clear opposites, but is in the form of a continuous choice, or, better yet, a continuous affirmation or negation in the context of constantly shifting pressures and determinants. It is therefore wrong to say that veganism is the termination or conclusion of dietary ethics; it rather denotes a position or, to put it less concretely (and therefore more truthfully), an embodied sensibility or ethical sensitivity to the problematic of human-animal relation. Because happiness, like ethics, cannot be a quantifiable operation, the ethical imperative is not to make the correct decision based on pre-existing categories of “the good”; rather, the ethical imperative is produced by the choices and circumstances that present themselves to us.

Why I Became Vegan (Part 1/4)

I. Introduction

After about five years spent vacillating between anxious vegetarianism and frustrated (if not shame-filled) pescetarianism, I, on May 17, 2012, became vegan. This is a decision that I did not take lightly, and, despite the well-meaning skepticism of many of my meat-eating friends and family members, I can confirm here that it was perhaps the greatest decision of my life (certainly of recent memory). Even though I do not characterize my choice as the final resolution to the ethical tension of vegetarianism/pescetarianism (for reasons that I will get into later), it has greatly increased my happiness.

The only changes to my diet were to cease partaking of dairy products, eggs, and the occasional extravagance of fish (easily replacing the protein, vitamins, etc. with other foods/drinks). After careful inspection, I was happy to discover that no other significant changes to any other aspect of my daily life were necessary. I am even happier to report that my decision has not been a significant burden on anyone else, with the exception of a patient family member who does the grocery shopping and prepares some of my meals. Though my choices of restaurants are certainly more limited now, this does not bother me. Dining at public restaurants is a terribly bourgeois ritual that I try to avoid whenever possible anyway.

[Sidebar: It is a myth, by the way, that it is difficult to live vegan in a city like Springfield, Missouri, even though this is an assertion/objection that I have encountered with surprising frequency from meat-eaters. I realize that it would be infelicitous and unjust (probably) to call such an assertion a thinly veiled rationalization for their own eating practices, but I cannot help but wonder why this is such a common refrain.]

However, even though this decision has negatively affected no one, I could not simply “get away with it.” This decision of mine is a private decision that necessarily addresses itself in public, and it is therefore at the same time a political decision, subject to the constitutive antagonisms of politics. For this reason, I discovered that to be vegan presents itself to others as an inherently confrontational choice, as if, for some unknown reason, my choice infringes on their own sense of dietetic agency, that it sits in judgment on or is a direct challenge to the validity of their own lifestyle. Naturally, I do not intend it that way—but what do I know about my intentions, anyway?

Sometimes, my choice is met with a variety of hastily generated rationalizations for eating meat. But, more often, in a mixture of curiosity and disturbance, a reason is demanded of me. The onus is on me, in other words, to defend myself and my choice, to provide an adequate and convincing (but never adequate or convincing enough) argument for veganism. But responding in the way that is expected of me is always something that I wish to avoid, if at all possible; after all, it seems to me that thinking only happens when one rejects the framework created by one’s inquisitor and attempts to found another. Therefore, let me make clear (what I think are) my intentions in writing this.

I do not wish to produce an “apology” for veganism. Plenty of literature in this mode already exists, highlighting everything from the ethical angle to the ecological and personal health benefits of this choice. While such pre-existing arguments naturally affected my own decision, I do not wish to rehearse them here. Instead, I want to focus on one thing that I think is lacking from popular discourse on veganism as a lifestyle—the limitations of “veganism” when constructed as an ethical practice, limitations that I wholeheartedly accept and, I think, allow ethics and veganism to continue to be practiced. Therefore, my purpose here is not to justify my choice over and against the objections of an imagined interlocutor, nor (heaven forbid!) to try to convince an imagined reader that veganism is “right.”

I don’t know what is “right.” That is why I became vegan.

From a future project

The Fragile Ethics of Testimony (Part 10/10)

VI.

Concluding Notes

Because I have evoked the current identity crisis of the left, it would be fitting to conclude with a reflection on the place of Agamben’s political philosophy in the context of dialogues of the contemporary left. Agamben is often discussed as part of a new anti-postmodernist wave in continental philosophy that seeks to recover philosophical and political content from such notions as subjectivity, ontology, and truth; he further expresses, with other radical philosophers, the need to escape from the moral degradation and nihilism of postmodernism, while fully realizing the impossibility of a return to modernism. Agamben’s project can therefore be linked, as many others have noted, to the projects of Alain Badiou (b. 1937) and Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949). However, though all three philosophers want to redefine the nature of political practice and the identity of the left, crucial differences emerge when considering the three together. Unlike Žižek and Badiou’s search for a new philosophical grounding for a politics of universal identity, Agamben is much more hesitant and cautious about evoking any kind of universalism, betraying, perhaps, the substantial influence of Foucault and the “messianic nihilism” of Benjamin. Agamben is thus less explicitly Marxist and is certainly less “militant” than Badiou and Žižek (though I do not mean to use “militant” in the pejorative sense). Also unlike his contemporaries, Agamben shows a closer attention to language and the historical development of concepts, whereas Žižek and Badiou are generally more psychoanalytical, showing especially the influence of Lacan. Finally, Agamben’s cautious return to an ethical imperative is a fundamental departure from Badiou especially, who considers any evocation of “ethical principles” to be “evil” and reactionary.[i]

Agamben’s return to the question of ethics, filtered through his singular perspective on subjectivity, is in other words a particularly relevant and novel reaction to the crippling relativism of postmodernism, a response that safeguards and values individual difference—for relativism, after all, can also always be understood as a kind particularism, in the sense that a relativist always regards his or her own perspective as beyond reproach. Though I would agree that the book has its weaknesses, Remnants of Auschwitz is nevertheless an important intervention in continental philosophy and critical theory. Therefore, Agamben does achieve the modest goal with which he starts—to establish “some signposts allowing future cartographers of the new ethical territory to orient themselves.”[ii]

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[i] I am referring here to Badiou’s book on ethics, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (New York: Verso, 2000).

[ii] Agamben, Remnants, 13.