Animal Subjects: Ethical and Ecological Concerns

First, I must admit that although this panel was a bit longer than I expected; Kayla, John, and I only had to wait five minutes more without looking like jerks for leaving. Ah - how unfortunate.

Second, I must admit that while parts of "Engaging with Animal Subjects: Ethical and Ecological Concerns" was over my head, I found the majority of this subject quite interesting. It began with Cary Wolfe discussing Animals about the Law. A point I thought was particularly interesting of his was the idea of holocaust and Nazism getting their ideas from animal slaughter houses. I found it extremely interesting to think of genocide this way, though it is extremely true. The genocides are simply another tangent of racism, in which races of humans animalize other humans, treating them to efficient mass extinctions, much like in the meat production industries. Humans generally find genocide to be quite wrong and so therefore I wondered why more humans do not find the mass extinction of animals wrong. Then Wolfe discussed Esposito's viewpoint in which genocide is one species killing their own, so therefore the killing of animals by humans can't very well be considered genocide. I found this interesting and I had to agree with his later points that we miss the individuality of all life. I think there is great ambiguity in laws because if we were had to create all life equally and ethically- then we would have to treat ecoli the same that we treat the great ape. I thought this point in particular especially pertained to what we had been discussing in class, not only recently, but also with the lobster debate. At what point does some forms of life become valuable or invaluable?

There was a point in Donna Haraway's presentation which I thought might bring a general closure to our class. She discussed the differences between "Wild Country" and "Quiet Country". Wild being that which doesn't bear the mark of the care of generations and Quiet Country being that which does bear the mark of the care of generations. She seems to believe that all humans should try to leave behind us "Quiet Country" and that the main concern is the extinctions or exterminations of animals which challenges us as humans to stay with the trouble and to get better at leaving behind this "Quiet Country". I think we can relate this idea to our ethical concerns about today's environmental crisis, and that the goal of each individual should be to try and leave behind us "Quiet Country"