Neither Man nor Beast

by Carol J Adams

  When dominion is equated with exploitation, people are finding in the Genesis passages an origin myth that confirms their own preconceptions concerning their relationship with animals. This gravitation to a sacralized dominance reveals its own inconsistencies, however, for it requires separating Genesis 1:26 from the instructions to be vegetarian that follow three verses later: “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.” The Interpreter’s Bible notes the difficulty of reconciling these two passages when it explicates Genesis 1:29: “Man is thus to be a vegetarian. This is something of a contradiction to verse 26, according to which he was to have dominion over all living creatures.”13 For others “the human ‘dominion’ envisaged by Genesis 1 included no idea of using the animals for meat and no terrifying consequences for the animal world. Human exploitation of animal life is not regarded as an inevitable part of human existence, as something given and indeed encouraged by the ideal conditions of the original creation.”14

  Genesis 1:26 does not supersede the meaning of creation that extends to include Genesis 1:29. When severed from the meaning of creation and the direction to be vegetarian, the passage becomes a historically justificatory defense of actions. This is a denial mechanism at the theological level.

  These defenses continue when considering God’s explicit permission to consume animals in Genesis 9:3, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” On a certain view of Genesis, one must argue that corpse eating is a consequence of the fall. The end of vegetarianism is “a necessary evil,”15 and the introduction of corpse eating has a “negative connotation.”16 In his discussion of the Jewish dietary laws, Samuel H. Dresner argues that “the eating of meat [permitted in Genesis 9] is itself a sort of compromise,” “a divine concession to human weakness and human need.” 17 Adam, the perfect man, “is clearly meant to be a vegetarian.”18 In pondering the fact that Isaiah’s vision of the future perfect society postulates vegetarianism as well, Dresner observes:

  At the “beginning” and at the “end” man is, thus, in his ideal state, herbivorous. His life is not maintained at the expense of the life of the beast. In “history” which takes place here and now, and in which man, with all his frailties and relativities, lives and works out his destiny, he may be carnivorous.19

  What is interposed between Genesis 1:29 and Isaiah is human history. In this sense, history is the concrete, social context in which we move. Moreover, history becomes our destiny.

  Through a corporate sacred myth, the dominant Christian culture offers the idea that because an action of the past was condoned by God and thus the ethical norm of the time, it may continue unchanged and unchallenged into the present time. History becomes another authority manipulating and extending our passivity. It allows us to objectify the praxis of vegetarianism: it is an ideal, but not realizable. It is out of time, not in time. When Genesis 9 is used to interpret backward to Genesis 1 and forward to our own practice of corpse eating, history is read into creation, and praxis is superseded by an excused fallibility. History will then immobilize the call to praxis—to stop the suffering, end institutional violence, and side with the oppressed animals. If vegetarianism is placed out of time, in the Garden of Eden, then we need not concern ourselves with it.

  Objectifying the praxis of vegetarianism makes it ahistorical, outside of history and without a history. This may explain one reason vegetarianism throughout the ages has been called a fad despite its recurrence. Corpse eating has not constituted a large part of the diets of humankind and most individuals at some point experience some discomfort with the eating of animals. Moreover, in the light of the sexual politics of meat whereby women, second-class citizens, are more likely to eat what are considered to be second-class foods in a patriarchal culture—vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than flesh—the question becomes who exactly has been eating the flesh after Genesis 9? Consider, for instance this terse comment on Leviticus 6 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leading nineteenth-century feminist: “The meat so delicately cooked by the priests, with wood and coals in the altar, in clean linen, no woman was permitted to taste, only the males among the children of Aaron.”20

  Feminist ethics needs to ask of Genesis 9 and the idea that humans are unable to avoid eating flesh: Is this true for us now? What feminist theology advocates for men—a “theology of relinquishment”21 —animal defenders advocate for people who exploit animals. Isn’t reconstructing relationships the most authentic and ethical response available to us?

  Resisting Institutionalized Violence

  We are estranged from animals through institutionalized violence and have accepted inauthenticity in the name of divine authority. We have also been estranged from ways to think about our estrangement. Religious concepts of alienation, brokenness, separation ought to include our treatment of animals. Eating animals is an existential expression of our estrangement and alienation from the created order.

  Elisabeth Shiissler Fiorenza reminds us that “the basic insight of all liberation theologies, including feminist theology, is the recognition that all theology, willingly or not, is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed.”22 To side with history and posit vegetarianism as unattainable is to side against the oppressed animals; to side with the praxis of vegetarianism is to side with the oppressed and against institutional violence.23

  We are not bound by our histories. We are free to claim an identity based on current understandings of animal consciousness, ecological spoilage, and health issues. No more crucifixions are necessary: animals, who are still being crucified, must be freed from the cross. (See Figure 11) The suffering of animals, our sacrificial lambs, does not bring about our redemption but furthers suffering, suffering from the inauthenticity that institutional violence promotes. Feminist ethicist Beverly Harrison offers important insights into this process of resisting institutional violence, which can be readily connected to the eating of animals. (I add these connections in brackets.)

  Each of us must learn to extend a critical analysis of the contradictions affecting our lives in an ever-widening circle, until it inclusively incorporates those whose situations differ from our own [such as animals]. This involves naming structures that create the social privilege we possess [to eat animals and make them appropriate victims] as well as understanding how we have been victims [manipulated into passivity so that we believe that we need to eat dead animals]. . . . Critical consciousness and, therefore, genuine social and spiritual transcendence, do not and cannot emerge apart from our refusing complicity in destructive social forces and resisting those structures that perpetuate life-denying conditions [including eating animals].24

  Perhaps our greatest challenge is to raise the consciousness of those around us to see the institutional violence of eating animals as an ethical issue. But how does something become an ethical issue? Sarah Bentley has described the process by which woman-battering became an ethical concern.25 She does so by drawing on Gerald Fourez’s Liberation Ethics that demonstrates that “concrete historical struggles” are the basis for the development of “the discipline called ‘ethics.’ ” For something to become an ethical issue we need “a new awareness of some oppression or conflict.” This is critical consciousness.

  The defense of animals and its identification of the eating of animals as inhumane and exploitative is an example of this critical consciousness. As Bentley explains, after a time of agitation by a group living with the critical consciousness of this oppression, others besides the group with the critical consciousness will begin to question the oppression as well. The social consciousness of a community or a culture is transformed by this agitation. “Ethical themes, therefore, are historically specific, arising from ‘the particular questions that certain groups are asking themselves.’ ”

  Responding to the insights from the defense of animals, i
ndividuals must ask questions about the institutional violence that permits them the personal satisfaction of eating flesh. “In effect, the [particular] questions represent ‘problems raised by practices that have to be faced.’ ” Farming and slaughtering practices such as caging, debeaking, liquid diets for calves, twenty-four-hour starvation before death, transporting and killing animals are all troublesome practices and they raise particular questions that need to be addressed.

  Ethical statements “always evolve ‘as particular ways of questioning in which people, individually or in groups, stake their lives as they decide what they want to do and what their solidarity is.’ Thus, if no one questions, if no practical engagement takes place, no problem exists.” False naming and other denial mechanisms I have mentioned cannot be overcome at a merely theoretical level. Practical engagement is required. Unless we acquaint ourselves with the practice of farming and slaughtering animals, we will not encounter the problems raised by these practices, such as the abuse of animals, the environment, our health, and workers in the corpse industry. If the problem is invisible, in a sense mirroring the physical invisibility of intensively farmed animals, then there will be ethical invisibility.

  An ethical stance that would challenge the institutional violence of eating animals involves three connected parts: certain practices raise problems; practical engagement and solidarity with the oppressed ensues when these problematic practices are perceived; an ethical position arises from this ongoing solidarity that forges critical community consciousness. As we become personally aware of the contradictions between feminist ethics and the practice of eating animals, we find that we must enter into a struggle regarding our own and this culture’s practice.

  To overcome our failure to acknowledge another’s inviolability we need to find alternative ways of relating to animals rather than eating them. Recall Beverly Harrison’s insight that “we know and value the world, if we know and value it, through our ability to touch, to hear, to see.”26 This sensual knowing involves calling upon second-person relationships with animals. The epigraph to the book offers a model for this type of knowing and its consequences: Alice Walker describes an experience when she touches, hears, and encounters an animal, when she has a second-person relationship with an animal. With the horse Blue the depth of feeling in his eyes recalls something she feels adults fail to remember: “Human animals and nonhuman animals can communicate quite well.”27 Shortly after regaining that knowledge, Walker experiences the injustice of a steak: “I am eating misery” she thinks. Walker touches, hears, sees, and describes interactions with very specific animals with whom she has second-person relationships, and she is changed by this, called to authenticity.

  We all have an option to dispense with the consumption of misery, we can feed instead on the grace of vegetables. Virginia de Araújo describes such a perspective, that of a friend, who takes the barrenness of a cupboard, filled only with “celery threads, chard stems, avocado skins” and creates a feast, a grace

  & says, On this grace I feed, I wilt

  in spirit if I eat flesh, let the hogs,

  the rabbits live, the cows browse,

  the eggs hatch out chicks & peck seeds.28

  The choice is institutionalized violence or feeding on grace. Can one feed on grace and eat animals? Our goal of living in right relationships and ending injustice is to have grace in our meals as well as at our meals. Feminist ethics must recognize that we are violating others in eating animals and in the process wilting the spirit. There are no appropriate victims. Let the hogs, rabbits, cows, chicks live. In place of misery, let there be grace.

  Figure 17 Vestiges by Susan kae Grant, Dallas, Texas, www.susankaegrant.com

  Figure 18 Vestiges by Susan kae Grant.

  Artist’s Statement: Vestiges (1992–93)

  This work consists of a limited edition artist’s book and installation. It questions the issues of animal welfare and addresses the misrepresentation and commodification of animals through language and detachment by juxtaposing appropriated medical illustrations of animal hearts with the human heart. Through the use of computer, a backdrop of text was created for each heart containing words associated with each animal. Visually, the words become a patterned backdrop with little significance until they are apparent, then they are haunting and provocative in their subtleness. The lush textural quality of the hearts themselves are equally compelling, creating a seductive veneer that deliberately overpowers the text. The combination of the two suggests a critical consciousness that focuses on moral and ethical principles while questioning traditional cultural belief systems.

  The installation is multidimensional. The walls are constructed of metal studs and chicken wire skinned with plastic tarp covered with text consisting of animal names repeated 31,000 times juxtaposed randomly with the word murder. The repetitive rows of text are subtle yet overwhelming in their symbolically vulnerable and translucent state.

  Six large segmented crosses each representing a different animal and 72 electric votives are mounted on top of the studs, wire, and wall text. Each cross measures roughly 6′(H) × 5.5′(L) × 4″(D) and consists of five 20″ × 24″ photographic panels mounted on aluminum. The photographs in the book and installation are manipulated silver prints using a variety of processes including sand paper, solvent transfers, and conté crayon on handmade silk paper.

  An altar and four small benches are placed in the center of the installation. Emanating quietly from the altar is a short version of a language piece consisting of a computer synthesized sound track created by Paul DeMarinis and Laetitia Sonami for the collaborative project, “Mechanization Takes Command.” While the computer synthesized voice is difficult to decipher, once obvious its haunting mechanical sound and message is confrontational. The mood of the environment is dark, impersonally industrial, evocative and ritualistic. It creates an undeniable spiritual quality which brings the issues of animal welfare to the forefront of public discourse.

  This work, like my others is autobiographic, but in a less personal sense. It deals more specifically with outward questions and societal issues associated with the welfare of animals, while at the same time, childhood memories were also inspirational. My father’s wealth came from the meat industry, he ran a meat packing plant. As a teenager in the summer I worked packing meat. Childhood memories of visiting the plant and later working in the industry remain haunting and unsettling. In 1981 I became a vegetarian and have been supportive of the animal welfare movement ever since.

  Susan kae Grant

  Chapter 10

  Beastly Theology: When Epistemology Creates Ontology

  Mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voices and form . . . yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds . . . The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Tracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.

  —Xenophanes

  Talking about whether or not animals feel pain, is like talking about the existence of God.

  —an animal researcher

  Similarities exist between discussing the other animals and discussing God, and no, it is not just that dog is God spelled backwards. Granted, some of the similarities are actually expressed in opposition: the idea of God as an unembodied, disincarnate force, while animals are seen as soulless and solely body. (Recall the discussion of somatophobia [see pp. 142–44]). The charge of anthropomorphizing, often laid at the feet of animal defenders, originally referred to language about God. As Mary Midgley points out, anthropomorphism “may be the only example of a notion invented solely for God, and then transferred unchanged to refer to animals.”1

  Our concepts of God, ourselves, and how we relate to animals are all bound together. Theologically as well as culturally positioned under man’s control, animals have be
en devalued. While all language about God is metaphorical, animals often become reduced to metaphors that reflect human concerns, human lives.2 The term beast functions in this way. Beastly theology is Christian patriarchal theology about animals, in which they are seen as “beasts” in a pejorative sense—categorized as less than, as representing the opposite of human beings.

  We will explore some of the problems inherent in this Christian beastly theology, because it has influenced and interacted with Western philosophy in positing animals as usable. In this chapter, I raise some of the philosophical issues that theology must attend to so that it is not used to uphold institutional violence. I place epistemological issues central to beastly theology, both to explore the problems of Christian beastly theology and to help shape theology that does not marginalize the other animals, but affirms relationships with them, treats them according to a transvaluation of their status, and that ultimately retires the word beast from the English language.

  Anthropomorphism can go either up or down, humanizing either the deity or animals; but if the vertical distance is closed in any way, i.e., between God and humans or humans and animals, many are disconcerted. Curious, then, that one of the few feminine images of the divine presented in the New Testament moves downward past humans entirely, drawing instead on an image from the world of animals. It is actually pollo-morphic: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34; see also Matthew 23:37). In talking about the other animals, including whether or not they feel pain, we must bring the theological attention and skills we would bring to talking about the existence of God. We must, in other words, attend to this with as much care as a hen gathering her brood under her wings.