NC Shell

The politics of the AC perpetuates anthropocentric oppression- their faith in the progressive nature of their project a priori excludes the non-human and leads to a view of the individual that makes the exploitation of nature inevitable
Bell and Russell 2K
(Anne C. by graduate students in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York Universi- ty and Constance L. a graduate student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Educa- tion, University of Toronto, Beyond Human, Beyond Words: Anthropocentrism, Critical Pedagogy, and the Poststructuralist Turn, http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf [10/24/11])

a number of root metaphors or analogs in critical pedagogy that reinforce the problem of anthropocentric thinking. These include the notion of change as inherently progressive , faith in the power of rational thought, and an understanding of individuals as potentially free, voluntaristic entities who will take responsibility for creating themselves when freed from societal forms of oppression on which critical pedagogy, and indeed liberal education generally, is based. In other words, they are culturally specific and stem from a period in Western history when the modern industrial world view was beginning to take shape. To be fair, Bowers understates the extent to which these assumptions are being
Bowers (1993a, 1993b) has identified questioned within critical pedagogy (e.g., Giroux, 1995; Peters, 1995; Shapiro, 1994; Weiler & Mitchell, 1992, pp. 1, 5). Nevertheless, his main point is well taken: proponents

of critical pedagogy have yet to confront the ecological consequences of an educational process that reinforces beliefs and practices formed when unlimited economic expansion and social progress seemed promised (Bowers, 1993b, p. 3). What happens when the expansion of human possibilities is equated with the possibilities of consumption? How is educating for freedom predicated on the exploitation of the nonhuman? Such queries push against taken-for-granted understandings of
human, nature, self, and community, and thus bring into focus the underlying tension between freedom as it is constituted within critical pedagogy and the limits that emerge through consideration of humans interdependence with the more-than-human world. This

tension is symptomatic of anthropocentrism. Humans are assumed to be free agents separate from and pitted against the rest of nature, our fulfillment predicated on overcoming material constraints. This assumption of human difference and superiority, central to Western thought since Aristotle (Abram, 1996, p. 77), has long been used to justify the exploitation of nature by and for humankind (Evernden, 1992, p. 96). It has also been used to justify the exploitation of human groups (e.g., women, Blacks, queers, indigenous peoples) deemed to be closer to nature that is, animalistic, irrational, savage, or uncivilized (Gaard, 1997; Haraway, 1989, p. 30; Selby, 1995, pp. 1720; Spiegel, 1988). This organic apartheid (Evernden, 1992, p. 119) is bolstered by the belief that language is an exclusively human property that elevates mere biological existence to meaningful, social existence. Understood in
this way, language undermines our embodied sense of interdependence with a more-than-human world. Rather than being a point of entry into the webs of communication all around us, language

becomes a medium through which we set ourselves apart and above . This view of language is deeply embedded in the conceptual framework of critical pedagogy, including poststructuralist approaches. So too is the human/nature dichotomy upon which it rests. When writers assume that it is language that enables us to think, speak and give meaning to the world around us, that meaning and consciousness do not exist outside language (Weedon, 1987, p. 32) and that subjectivity is constructed by and in language (Luke & Luke, 1995, p. 378), then their transformative projects are encoded so as to exclude any consideration of the nonhuman. Such assumptions effectively remove all subjects from nature. As Evernden (1992) puts
it, if subjectivity, willing, valuation, and meaning are securely lodged in the domain of humanity, the possibility of encountering anything more than material objects in nature is nil (p. 108). What

is forgotten? What is erased when the real is equated with a begin, we forget that we humans are surrounded by an astonishing diversity of life forms . We no longer perceive or give expression to a world in
proliferating culture of commodified signs (see Luke & Luke, 1995, on Baudrillard)? To

which everything has intelligence, personality, and voice. Polyphonous echoes are reduced to homophony, a term Kane (1994) uses to denote the reduced sound of human language when it is used under the assumption that speech is something belonging only to human beings (p. 192). We

forget too what Abram (1996) describes as the gestural, somatic dimension of language, its sensory and physical resonance that we share with all expressive bodies (p. 80). The vast forgetting to which these scholars allude is a culturally and historically specific phenomenon. In Western culture, explains Evernden (1992), it is to the Renaissance that we owe the modern
conceptualization of nature from which all human qualities, including linguistic expression, have been segregated and dismissed as projection. Once scoured of any normative content assigned to humanity, nature is strictly constrained, knowable, and ours to interrogate (pp. 28, 3940, 48). It is objectified as a thing, whereas any status as agent or social being is reserved for humans (Haraway, 1988, p. 592). The language best suited to this cleansing of nature is that of the natural sciences. Scientific accounts, written in languageexclusively descriptive and avowedly neutral (Evernden, 1992, p. 85), are widely regarded as factual and unbiased and thus are granted a privileged role in naming nature. As Haraway (1986) explains: A scientist names nature in written, public documents, which are endowed with the special, institutionally enforced quality of being perceived as objective and applicable beyond the cultures of the people who wrote those documents. (p. 79) According to Haraway (1986), the aesthetic of realism that underlies the truth claims of the natural sciences means many practitioners tend to see themselves not as interpreters but as discoverers moving from description to causal explanation (p. 89). Haraways analysis reminds us that poststructuralism can and should be used to call into question the universal legitimacy of science insofar as it is used to explicate not only the human domain but also the natural sciences. This questioning almost never takes place. Whereas accusations of reductionism have been levelled at the biobehavioural sciences when focused on humans (e.g., explaining behaviour solely in genetic terms), rarely are these accusations made against similar studies on nonhumans (Noske, 1997, p. 83). The reason, presumably, is that the sorts of questions that could be raised about how culture, class, race, and gender shape knowledge about human experience do not pertain to truth claims about the nonhuman. Humans alone are understood to have histories open to interpretation. Everything else is matter for measurement and prediction, physical stuff that can be described and classified once and for all. To

move beyond such taken-for-granted notions of human and nature, Evernden and Haraway suggest, we must admit into the conversation some non-common-sensical insights and some unsettling possibilities (Evernden, 1992, p. 102 and Haraway, 1988, p. 593, respectively). Haraway (1992) writes of otherworldly conversations, a metaphor helpful in pointing to the possibility of conversants in a discourse in which all of the actors are not us (p. 84). To this end, we consider a few promising reconceptualizations of what might constitute language, agency, and meaningful existence beyond the human realm.

The ACs silence is a loaded presence- their forgetting of the non-human world and the individualistic formation of agency ensure the replication of prevailing anthropocentric power relations
Bell and Russell 2K
(Anne C. by graduate students in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York Universi- ty and Constance L. a graduate student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Educa- tion, University of Toronto, Beyond Human, Beyond Words: Anthropocentrism, Critical Pedagogy, and the Poststructuralist Turn, http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf [10/24/11]) For this reason, the various movements against oppression need to be aware of and supportive of each other. In critical pedagogy, however, the

exploration of questions of race, gender, class, and sexuality has proceeded so far with little acknowledgement of the systemic links between human oppressions and the domination of nature. The more-than-human world and human relationships to it have been ignored, as if the suffering and exploitation of other beings and the global ecological crisis were somehow irrelevant. Despite the call for attention to voices historically absent from traditional canons and narratives (Sadovnik, 1995, p. 316), nonhuman beings are shrouded in silence. This silence characterizes even the work of writers who call for a rethinking of all culturally positioned essentialisms. Like other educators influenced by poststructuralism, we agree that there is a need to scrutinize the language we use, the meanings we deploy, and the epistemological frameworks of past eras (Luke & Luke, 1995, p. 378). To treat social categories as stable and unchanging is to reproduce the prevailing relations of power (Britzman et al., 1991, p. 89). What would it mean, then, for critical pedagogy to extend this investigation and critique to include taken-for-granted understandings of human, animal, and nature? This question is difficult to raise precisely because these understandings are taken for granted. The anthropocentric bias in critical pedagogy manifests itself in silence and in the asides of texts. Since it is not a topic of discussion, it can be difficult to situate a critique of it. Following feminist analyses, we find

that examples of anthropocentrism, like examples of gender symbolization, occur in those places where speakers reveal the assumptions they think they do not need to defend, beliefs they expect to share with their audiences (Harding, 1986, p. 112). Take, for example, Freires (1990) statements about the differences between Man and animals. To set up his discussion of praxis and the importance of naming the world, he outlines what he assumes to be shared, commonsensical beliefs about humans and other animals. He defines the boundaries of human membership according to a sharp, hierarchical dichotomy that establishes human superiority. Humans alone, he reminds us, are aware and self-conscious beings who can act to fulfill the objectives they set for themselves. Humans alone are able to infuse the world with their creative presence, to overcome situations that limit them, and thus to demonstrate a decisive attitude towards the world (p. 90). Freire (1990, pp. 8791) represents other animals in terms of their lack of such traits. They are doomed to passively accept the given, their lives totally determined because their decisions belong not to themselves but to their species. Thus whereas humans inhabit a world which they create and transform and from which they can separate themselves, for animals there is only habitat, a mere physical space to which they are organically bound. To accept Freires assumptions is to believe that humans are animals only in a nominal sense. We are different not in degree but in kind, and though we might recognize that other animals have distinct qualities, we as humans are somehow more unique. We have the edge over other creatures because we are able to rise above monotonous, species-determined biological existence. Change in the service of human freedom is seen to be our primary agenda.

Humans are thus cast as active agents whose very essence is to transform the world as if somehow acceptance, appreciation, wonder, and reverence were beyond the pale. This discursive frame of reference is characteristic of critical pedagogy. The human/animal opposition upon which it rests is taken for granted, its cultural and historical specificity not acknowledged. And therein lies the problem. Like other social constructions, this one derives its persuasiveness from its seeming facticity and from the deep investments individuals and communities have in setting themselves off from others (Britzman et al., 1991, p. 91). This becomes the normal way of seeing the world, and like other discourses of normalcy, it limits possibilities of taking up and confronting inequities (see Britzman, 1995). The primacy of the human enterprise is simply not questioned. Precisely how an anthropocentric pedagogy might exacerbate the
environmental crisis has not received much consideration in the literature of critical pedagogy, especially in North America. Although there may be passing reference to planetary destruction, there is seldom mention of the relationship between education and the domination of nature, let alone any sustained exploration of the links between the domination of nature and other social injustices.

Concerns about the nonhuman are relegated to environmental education. And since environmental education, in turn, remains peripheral to the core curriculum (A. Gough, 1997; Russell, Bell, & Fawcett, 2000), anthropocentrism passes unchallenged.1

Anthropocentric ordering is the foundation of the war machine and drives the exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity and gender
Kochi, 2K9
(Tarik, Sussex law school, Species war: Law, Violence and Animals, Law Culture and Humanities Oct 5.3) Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach,28 or a natural law of minimal content29 because in contrast to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a thick conception of the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a response to religious civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious conceptions of the good life (for example, those held by competing Christian Confessions) often drove conflict and violence. Yet, it

would be a mistake to assume that the categories of survival, preservation of life and bare life are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and bare life as expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value in particular, the specific distinction of value between human and nonhuman life. Bare life in this sense is not bare but contains within it a distinction of value between the worth of human life placed
above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect bare life within this tradition contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The

foundational moment of the modern juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The Westphalian tradition puts itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation of life, however its concern for life is already marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal life is violently used as the raw material for preserving human life. Grounded upon, but concealing the human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the killing of animals from its definition of war proper, and, through rendering dominant the modern juridical definition of war proper the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a particular conception of the good

life. Following from this original distinction of life-value realized through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be of a lesser value under a European, Christian, secular30 natural law conception of the good life. Underneath this concern with the preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what particular forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human life) and ways of living were worthy of preservation, realization and elevation. The business contracts of early capitalism,31 the power of white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European life over non-European and Christian lives over nonChristian heathens and Muslims, were some of the dominant forms of life preferred for preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.

Evaluate impact solvency based on who solves the root causeproximate causes are useless and only replicate their harms
Shaw and Wong, 89 - *Ph.D., Health Economist and Program at Adviser of the Human Development Group at the World Bank AND
**HSBC Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Business at the University of British Columbia (*R. Paul AND **Yuwa, 1989, Genetic Seeds of Warfare: evolution, nationalism and patriotism, Google Books, p. 11-12) So far, we have synthesized many studies indicating that intergroup warfare is a frequent and widespread event and is used to gain control over potentially limiting resources. It is underwritten by aggression with both anatomical and neurochemical correlates. Such

information is not sufficient , however, to establish that humanity has a propensity for warfare. Nor is it
sufficient to produce a comprehensive theory of warfaring propensities. Fundamental questions are still unresolved. What ultimate utilizes have humans sought to maximize when engaging in warfare? Why do individuals ultimately band together, often along ethnic lines, in groups when waging war? What ever-larger evolutionary process favored alliances of groups for competition/warfare? What is the role of the brain, cognition, and conscious reflection in all of this? Such questions

demand consideration of ultimate causes the underlying reasons for an activity existing in an animals repertoire of behaviors. What is important from this view is not specific differences in a behavior (for example, aggression) and its forms, but why that behavior exists at all. In other words, what ultimate utility or payoff has a particular activity provided for
it to have been reinforced and retained throughout evolution? It is important here to distinguish between ultimate and proximate causes insofar as the latter focus specifically on contemporary or immediate stimuli which trigger an activity. For example, it has been established that infants aged 6 to 18 months demonstrate a fear of strangers. A proximate analysis would address events triggering the fear, such as a strange person walking toward a baby. Ultimate analysis would ask whether the fear response was innate and, if so, what factors influence its evolution. (as it happens, evidence has accumulated suggesting such behavior is innate. It is called xenophobia and will be discussed further in chapter 4). It is indeed unfortunate that most

political scientists, sociologists, and psychologists tend to be most familiar with proximate factors (causes and functions) involving cognitive, social, physical, and neurophsyiological stimulus events which surround and mediate conflict. Why is this so? On reason is that the study of proximate factors allows more control, involves less time, and is more convenient and inexpensive than the comparative longitudinal and genetic approaches requires to shed light on ultimate factors (Charlesworth 1986). Second, analysis of different kinds of proximate causes is the raison detre for the different academic disciplines themselves. An interdisciplinary approach, on the other hand, attempts to decode complex, ultimate structures involving the interaction of many different kinds of variables. Notwithstanding the renewed importance attached
to interdisciplinary work, much ongoing research remains discipline bound and is content with analysis of proximate causes. For instance, the authors were shocked when the director of a school of international relations suggested their work would ne be taken seriously by political scientists unless communicated in political science terminology, couched in political science theory, and affiliated with a political science institute. Yet another reason for neglect of ultimate factors is their close tie to scientific traditions such as biology and behavioral ecology. Modes of reasoning in evolutionary theory and population biology have remained largely unfamiliar to social scientists. This point can be illustrated by new discipline sociobiology, a synthesis of ideas and data originating from several life sciences. These include molecular biology, population biology, theoretical ecology. Borrowing from Wind (1984), Figure 1.2 relates these and other sciences to sociobiology. It also represents a crude attempt to order causes leading to particular class of behavior (for example, aggression) in Homo

By drawing on sociobiology, among other disciplines, we can advance a new and more fundamental understanding of humanitys propensity for warfare. The challenge is to discern how ultimate causes have interacted with changing environments during evolution to produce sets of temporal, proximate causes which, themselves, may operate in an ultimate or reinforcing sense. Such reasoning does not employ sociobiology to suggest that genetic determinism or gene(s) for
sapiens and in nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees.

warfare exists. Rather, it is precisely this

emphasis on ultimate causality that leads us to identity and understand important proximate causes which emerged in humanitys early history to reinforce propensities for warfare.

Alternative Text: Adopt an animal standpoint epistemology. Only adopting an animal standpoint epistemology solves their impactsits also mutually exclusive with the aff
Best, 10 Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso (Steven, 12/31/10, Total Liberation:
Revolution for the 21st Century, http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/total-liberation-revolution-for-the-21st-century-4/, KONTOPOULOS) But while

people have written history from the theological perspective, the humanist perspective, and the environmental determinism perspective, to date there has been little from the animal perspective. Marx once stated that the riddle of history (the origins of domination) is grasped in theory and resolved in practice by communism; in truth, however, the origin and evolution of hierarchy and dominator societies cannot be deciphered without the animal standpoint , for the ten thousand year reign of human domination over other animals is central to comprehending humanitys most serious problems, as it is fundamental to resolving them. Animal Standpoint Theory According to feminist standpoint theory, each oppressed group has an important perspective or insight into the nature of society.[iii] People of color, for instance, can illuminate colonialism and the pathology of racism, while women can reveal the logic of patriarchy that has buttressed so many different modes of social power throughout history. While animals cannot speak about their sufferings in human language, it is only from the animal standpoint analyzing how humans have related to and exploited other animals that we can grasp central aspects of the emergence and development of hierarchy. Without the animal standpoint, we cannot understand the core dynamics of the domination of humans over animals, the earth, and one another; the pathology of human violence, warfare, militarism, and genocide; the ongoing animal Holocaust; and the key causes of the current global ecological crisis. From the animal standpoint, we can see that the oppression of human over human and the human exploitation of nature have deep roots in the human domination over nonhuman animals.

The perm fails-the attempt to embrace animals flattens out difference as the specifics of species based oppression are cast aside- this anthropocentric move disables the ability of the affirmative to empower the non-human
Ahuja 2k9
(Neel, Asst Prof English and Comparative Lit at UNC, Postcolonial critique in multispecies world, www.unc.edu/~nahuja/Ahuja%20-

%20PMLA.pdf [10/24/11]) Race and speciesconcepts that precede modern scientific thoughtwere historically united in nature through a modern epistemology that understood bodies in terms of resemblances in their deep organic structures. This is the basis of what I call speciated reason, the taxonomic paradigm that based its categorization of bodies on functionalist descriptions of organs and systems. Emerging

with an animal-centered evolutionary biology, this episteme was consolidated from 1800 to 1930. Although speciated reason challenged absolute divisions between species, it also naturalized biological difference, legitimizing the definition of racial groups as subspecies (a definition that justifed colonization and extermination) and reinforcing
heterosexual reproduction as the privileged site of species definition for multicellular organisms.3 A common response to the racial legacies of speciated reason is to describe non-European worldviews that unveil the episteme as provincial.4 This strategy is important for highlighting the contingency of speciated reason, although it may occasion an essentialist trap of situating the others of Europe outside modernity. To

explain speciated reasons influence beyond the borders of Europe, critics of racial and colonial power have taken up another strategy, critiquing animalization , the organized subjection of racialized groups

through animal figures. Animalization involves contextual comparisons between animals (as laborers, food, pests, or wildlife) and the bodies or behaviors of racialized sub jects (Ritvo 12127; Pratt 20813). W. E. B. DuBois denounces post-Reconstruction industrial schools that failed to treat African Americans as more than meat (94), leaving them in a tertium quid between human beings and cattle (89). Ngg wa Thiongo re counts that punishment in British schools for speaking Gikuyu included wearing a sign de claring, I AM A DONKEY (Language 437). Frantz Fanon describes the rejection of ani malization as a basis of national consciousness among colonized peoples (who ironically declare their humanity with a roar): When the colonist speaks of the colonized he uses zoological terms. . . . This explosive popu lation growth, those hysterical masses, those blank faces, those shapeless, obese bodies, this headless, tailless cohort, these children who seem not to belong to anyone, this indolence sprawling under the sun, this vegetating existence, all is part of the colonial

The colonized know all that and roar with laughter every time they hear themselves called an animal by the other. For are not animals. And at the very moment when they discover their humanity, they begin to sharpen their weapons to secure its victory . (78) Feminist theory has analyzed the animalization of
vocabulary. . . .

they know that they

womens bodies since the 1970s, and black feminist theorists argued more specifically that the objectification and hypersexualization of black womens bodies were central to the maintenance of larger racial formations (hooks 62). Unfortunately

extending the conflation of race and species, animal studies often assimilates racial discourse into species discourse, flattening out historical contexts that determine the differential use of animal (and other) figures in the processes of racialization. Even some of the fields more nuanced accounts of racialization assimilate race critique into species critique, taking animalization as the generic basis of racism. Cary Wolfes often insightful study Animal Rites contends that an anthropocentric species discourse underlies racisms conditions of possibility (167). Wolfe dismisses Homi Bhabha and Toni Morrison for failing to address animals, rejecting their failed postmodern pluralism and lack of interest in justice for the animal (79). Such arguments risk perversely suggesting that because race and postcolonial critics possess special insight into the violence of humanism, they have a unique responsibility to speak for animals.5 Wolfe resists simplistic comparisons of racial and species violence that continue to abound in animal studies and mainstream animal activism;6 still,
animalization theorists like Fanon open more direct avenues for a cultural critique that holds race and species as intersecting yet discrete aspects of identity.

The perm fails-Dont fall for the affirmatives enlightened anthropocentrismtheir paternalistic politics ensures the colonization of the nonhuman
Domanska, 10
(Ewa, Assoctiate professor of theory and history or historigophy at Adam Mickiewicz Univ, visiting associate prof dept of Anthro @ Stanford, Beyond Anthropocentrism in Historical Studies http://www.nnet.gr/historein/historeinfiles/histvolumes/hist10/historein10-domanska.pdf [10/24/11]) More and more, the humanities

are extending their debates about identity, alterity and exclusion to encompass nonhuman entities: animals, plants and things. The other is understood not only as something of a different race, gender, class, sexual or religious orientation, but also someone or something of a different species and organic status (e.g., something inorganic). Studying various figurations of subjectivity, we may notice
that the conventional criteria based on the cultural and social understanding of the subject and the dualist, hierarchical thinking in terms of the organic/ inorganic and human/nonhuman28 have become insufficient, while the popular vision of constructivism, which conceives of race, gender and other aspects of identity as products of culture, limits the scope of humanistic research. For example, environmental historian Donald Worster has indicated that the unexamined cult ural determinism which underlies mainstream historiography is just as problematic as any other type of determinism.29 Ted Steinberg, in a less avant -garde mode, complains that, among such historical categories as race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality, environment is never mentioned.30 Perhaps we should transgress the cultural determinism of the dominant versions of constructivism in a situation in which the interactions between humans and nonhumans and the boundaries of species identity have become major problems in the human sciences. For example, there are currently many discussions on the return to things.31 It does not mean, of course, that things have been totally neglected by histori ans. On the contrary, the study of things is the principal task of the history of material culture. Nonetheless, as I have mentioned above, there is a challenge to find a way of moving beyond both the positivistic description of things and the semiotic approach to the thing as text, symbol or metaphor. Narrativism and textualism dematerialised things by comparing t he thing to the text and research to reading, and by perceiving the thing as a message or sign. In an attempt to reverse those negative tendencies, new material studies point t o the agency of things, accentuating the fact that things not

the notion of the agency of things does not mean that things have intentions, but that they enjoy a particular status in their relations with people. 33 For scholars
only exist but also act and have performative potential.32 Of course,

inspired by Marcel Mauss idea of the gift, things have a socialising function: they solidify interpersonal relations and they participate in the creation of human identity at the individual and collective levels and mark its changes. Todays

prevailing approach to nonhumans in terms of their alterity (animals, plants and things considered as others) is conservative rather than progressive. It remains within the anthropocentric humanities; within enlightened anthropocentrism. This approach might also be called paternalism since it presupposes a hegemonic attitude towards nonhuman others. It still implies human mastery and relations of hierarchy but presumes a certain responsibility not only towards other humans but also towards nonhuman beings. In this approach, people act on behalf of nonhumans thereby fulfilling a protective contract .34 Such an approach still promotes a colonising discourse in which the

nonhuman is treated as the fragile and victimised other in a vein similar to that of women, children and the disabled. This approach leads to a radical personification of animals, plants and things and confirms the
perception that treating things and animals like people is a way to readdress questions about the human condition. However, even within the conventional framework of humanistic research, to pose the problem of a nonhuman subject means to challenge the anthropocentric position, and thus make the first step towards stopping the anthropogenetic or anthropological machine to use Giorgio Agambens term.35

NR Overview
The aff is anthropocentric- their faith in the progressive nature of their project a priori excludes the non-human and leads to a view of the individual that makes the exploitation of nature inevitable-in the context of compulsory voting this would mean to create an implicit us versus them dichotomy where our human citizens are given voting protections but other populations are excluded-thats Bell and Russell Independently, the affs silence on the non-human is a loaded presencetheir forgetting of the non-human world augments anthropocentric power relationsthis greases the wheels of the war machine and drives the exclusion of populations based on race, ethnicity, and gender and turns their impacts thats Bell, Russell, and Kochi. A few global arguments Critical impact framing argumentevaluate impact solvency solely on who solves the root cause betterfocus on proximate causes attacks the symptoms, not the disease which replicates all their harmsthe alternative solves the root cause better because it eradicates the foundations for dominate power relationsthats Best and Shaw and Wong. The alternative solvesadopting an animal standpoint epistemology opens human understanding to larger issues that liberates the animal oppressed and paves the way for aff solvencythats Best. Sequencingadopting an animal starting point paves the way for solving race, gender, and ethnic issues like the affthats Best. Must vote negd-rule
Best, 10 Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso (Steven, 12/31/10, Total Liberation:
Revolution for the 21st Century, http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/total-liberation-revolution-for-the-21st-century-4/, KONTOPOULOS)

Progressives fighting for peace, justice, democracy, autonomy, and ecology must acknowledge the validity of and need for the animal liberation movement for two reasons. First, on a moral level, the brutalization, exploitation, and suffering of animals is so great, so massive in degree and scope, that it demands a profound moral and political response from anyone with pretence to values of compassion, justice, rights, and nonviolence. Every year humans butcher 70 billion land and marine animals for food;
millions more die in experimental laboratories, fur farm, hunting preserves, and countless other killing zones.

The K is a pre-requisite to their affwithout the K they cant solve

Best, 10 Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso (Steven, 12/31/10, Total Liberation:
Revolution for the 21st Century, http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/total-liberation-revolution-for-the-21st-century-4/, KONTOPOULOS) Second, on a strategic level, the

animal liberation movement is essential for the human and earth liberation movements . In numerous key ways, the domination of humans over animals underlies the domination of human over human and propels the global ecological crisis. There cannot be revolutionary changes in ethics, psychology, society, and ecology without engaging animal liberation. It is becoming increasingly clear that human, animal, and earth liberation movements are inseparably linked, such that none can be free until all are free. This is not a new insight, but rather a lost
wisdom and truth. Recall the words of Pythagoras, who 2500 years ago proclaimed: For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love. A vital task of our time is to understand the full import of this insight.

AT: Animals Have No Reason/Language

1. This isnt a justification for the actions against them. 2. Their argument proves ourstheir inability to recognize animals autonomy reproduces the same mentality their aff criticizes. 3. This same logic justifies the worst atrocities and turns the aff
Best, 10 Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso (Steven, 12/31/10, Total Liberation:
Revolution for the 21st Century, http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/total-liberation-revolution-for-the-21st-century-4/, KONTOPOULOS)

It has escaped the attention of the entire Left that the arguments they use to justify human domination over animals that animals allegedly lack reason and language were the same arguments used by imperialists when they slaughtered native peoples and male oppressors when they exploited women. Humanists upholding speciesist views, therefore, ironically reinforce their own domination and cannot access the animal standpoint to understand the origins of domination, and so are in no position to advance a viable politics of liberation.

4. They dojust because its not a human language doesnt disprove they do, thats like saying a group of people dont have a language because it isnt the one you speak.

AT: Permutation
They conceded multiple links from the 1NCthe aff deliberately chose to ignore the non-human world, which perpetuates an anthropocentric understanding of the world and results in the worst atrocities that turn the aff and undermine perm solvency thats Bell and Russell, Kochi, and Best. The aff is a step in the exact opposite direction-expanding rights of humans furthers the gap of separation of political consideration between humans and non humans. Its not enough that they just say they wish to integrate their leftist project with ours, they need a piece of evidence saying that their project would allow ours to succeed all of our link arguments prove that their political project will just push ours to the side. You cant capture solvency for the alternative- your activation of agency is predicated on the same formation of the human-centered individual that is indistinct from the anthropocentric logic of the squo. The alternative is not an embracement of agency but a loss of identity, that of the human, which is critical to transformation of our relations to the animals and nature Their epistemology is incompatible with the alternativeturns the case
Best, 10 Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso (Steven, 12/31/10, Total Liberation:
Revolution for the 21st Century, http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/total-liberation-revolution-for-the-21st-century-4/, KONTOPOULOS)

It has escaped the attention of the entire Left that the arguments they use to justify human domination over animals that animals allegedly lack reason and language were the same arguments used by imperialists when they slaughtered native peoples and male oppressors when they exploited women. Humanists upholding speciesist views, therefore, ironically reinforce their own domination and cannot access the animal standpoint to understand the origins of domination, and so are in no position to advance a viable politics of liberation .

Sequencing DAadopting an animal starting point paves the way for solving race, gender, and ethnic issues like the affthats Best. The perm fails-the attempt to embrace animals flattens out difference as the specifics of species based oppression are cast aside- this anthropocentric move disables the ability of the affirmative to empower the non-human-Ahuja says that what happens is when we integrate specieism into other forms of oppression then specieism is gutted out in favor of human first oppression problem solving-resulting in the initial problem. The perm fails-Dont fall for the affirmatives enlightened anthropocentrismtheir paternalistic politics ensures the colonization of the nonhuman-Domanska says it presupposes a hegemonic attitude towards the nonhuman others-its the same thing as what happened to women and children, wed be condescending and treat them as fragile, victimized and in need of our protection-culminating in the consolidation of power to humans.