Essentialising Whiteness & Intersectionality: some reflections on Nocella’s ‘intervention’ and Critical Animal

Studies

Volume 10, Issue of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (JCAS) included an ‘intervention’

written by Anthony Nocella (2012): Challenging Whiteness in the Animal Advocacy Movement.1 A central

theme of his piece is the necessity of intersectionality—itself a foundational element of Critical

Animal Studies (CAS)—in working towards an end to exploitation and oppression across society.

The explicit focus of Nocella’s paper were the implications of whiteness within the ‘animal advocacy

movement’. Specifically, he states: ‘the issue of white hegemony within the movement has not been

adequately addressed.’

This paper forms a reflection on how Nocella has framed and presented his ‘intervention’, and some

of the broader issues facing CAS.2 In affirming the importance of intersectionality to the aims and

approach of CAS, as well as all forms of theory and praxis working towards progressive social

change, I seek to illustrate a number of implications enmeshed in Nocella’s piece that require

attention. These include the underlying framing of his critique, a murky poststructural-

anthropomorphic dalliance, and depth of engagement lost across a broad sea of commentary

presented as intersectional analysis. In constructively engaging with this call to action, I draw from

theory and praxis in the field of critical whiteness studies, and sociology more broadly, to explore

these implications. This paper endeavors to highlight how approaching the underlying issues

differently can overcome a number of these implications, and assist with the development of

reflexive and nuanced engagement.

To conclude this response to Nocella’s intervention, I directly reflect on some of the overarching

implications of such a notion and what it implies. I will illustrate that the act of intervening, of

seeing oneself as intervening, constructs a false dualism where the intervenor is situated outside of

the implications of what is being exposed and challenged. In doing so, I draw from Ghassan

Hage’s (1995) The Limits of ‘Anti-Racist Sociology’ to expose how the positioning of one’s actions as

1 This response is (specifically) limited in its focus. In giving attention to some of the issues identified in Nocella’s intervention, it is inescapable that legitimacy is inadvertently attached to a number of these and other the claims made (i.e. white male voices). This is not the intent of this paper, which at times hints at some of the implications: these, similarly important, issues are left for others to (further) expose and explore. 2 Nocella and I are positioned as white within our (respective) societies. This is important to reflect on as it is expressed as a basis for why Nocella has found a need to ‘intervene’. Similarly, I have responded to aspects of what he has outlined because I accrue unearned privilege and status as a result of my social (socio-political) positioning as white (and male).

‘good’ (i.e. above many of the implications of that which they are challenging) limits the potential

for exposing and undermining key elements of whiteness in our own actions (and others).

Extending on this, the construction of such a (false) dualism perpetuates strategic (i.e. willful)

ignorance of the implications of our own actions. A simple way to think about this is that of choosing

not to think about something as an active choice—even if unmarked to us (for example, men not

thinking about the implications of patriarchy). We can see the ramifications everywhere if we look

for them: what we write about and publish, our classrooms, in our everyday interactions. This is a

foundation issue for CAS. Our (in)actions actively co-constitute our own ignorance, in much the

same way that carnism (see Joy 2010) renders vivisection and other forms of exploitation for human

ends unquestioned and non-considered.

The overarching aim of this response is to identify effective ways to engage with and reflect on the

broad implications of epistemologies of ignorance, focusing on whiteness and white hegemony

across (western) societies. This is a task that must be undertaken by those positioned as white: one

we undertake not out of guilt, rather to transcend the implications of whiteness as relational for our

own sake. We must do so as a centerpiece of the inclusive justice-seeking paradigm that forms the

(necessary and) foundational basis of CAS, and progressive engagement more broadly.

What is Whiteness?

Before we can really reflect on the implications of white hegemony, and the importance of exposing

and challenging these across society, we need to grapple with whiteness: what whiteness is; what it

constitutes; what it means. Coming to terms with what whiteness is can be cognitively difficult for

those positioned as white in western societies. The preceding sentence may seem a little strange. For

example, what do I mean by ‘positioned as white’? Being described as positioned as white is very

different to being described as white. This is an important distinction. Specifically, the latter has a

tendency to essentialize whiteness as biological. We can draw from the work of Charles Mills here to

unpack and reflect on some of the implications, specifically his description of ‘whiteness as a

politicoeconomic system committed to white supremacy’ (Mills 1999: 106).3 The terms white and

whiteness represent relationally constructed categories. What this means is that there is an

interpretive (historical) flexibility to who were and are considered as being white, which is rooted in

socio-political context.4 Supremacy, as Mills uses it, refers to a perpetuation of unearned privilege

3 Mills (1999) demarcates whiteness from Whiteness: the former being a phenotype/racial classification; the latter referring to the politico-economic system. Across critical whiteness studies, (lowercase) whiteness is used in part to emphasize that ‘race’ is also socially constructed. 4 Noel Ignatiev’s (1995) How the Irish Became White documents an example of this in recent North American history.

built into social structures, institutions and discourse. There are many examples of unearned

privilege across western societies, typified by disproportionate representation in the workplace,

government and other disciplinary institutions.5

What emerges from identifying whiteness as a politicoeconomic system is an ability to expose the

positioning of certain people as being white as normative (i.e. ‘normal’), rather than raced.6 The

definition of white is based on negation: it is rooted in what one is not, as in ‘not like them’. To be

considered as white is to be effectively non-named and non-defined. We can see this in reactions

(often of unease, discomfort and at times outright rejection) of those positioned as white when they

are described as white (see Nicoll 2004 at 19). That is, whiteness is not defined by what

characteristics someone possesses (what they are) or their actions (what the do), rather by what

s/he is not or does not do in comparison to others. White people do not do things that are explicitly

white: they do things differently to, say, ‘black’ people. To put this in more theoretical terms,

whiteness is a socially constructed relational situatedness (a perspective drawn from). There is an

anti-essentialism to whiteness, framed against a constructed essentialism. What this means is that

‘black’ people are defined by their actions: to be black is act a certain way; to act a certain way is to

be black—whereas those positioned as white are not. Of note is that this is a perspective constructed

and perpetuated by whiteness. It is part of white hegemony, and becomes a normative and

unquestioned idea in the lexicon of whiteness as lived experience. What emerges here is an

understanding of whiteness, its normativity and discursive power (white hegemony) as biopolitical.

What do I mean by biopolitical? Foucault describes biopolitics (biopower) as a form of political

power exercised across populations (differentially, having disparate impacts and implications on

‘different’ people) into every aspect of life—at every level of the social body (Foucault 1978: 141).

Whiteness means-produces different experiences for those positioned as white, and those who being

white is relationally situated and (non-)defined against. Aileen Moreton-Robinson identifies the

machinations of whiteness as ‘operate[ing] through the racialized application of disciplinary

knowledges and regulatory mechanisms’ across society to attain normativity and ubiquity (2006:

387). Certain ideas and understandings (epistemologies and ontologies) are positioned as normal 5 In Australia, for example, life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander males born in 2005-2007 was 11.5 years lower than for other people in Australia, and 9.7 years lower Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander males (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011).

The rate of incarceration (2008) is similarly disproportionate, being was 2,223 per 100,000. This equates to 17.2 times that of the other people in Australia. These figures indicate an increase in incarceration rate of 34.5% over the preceding eight years{IndigenousImprisonmentRates 2009}. 6 The term race is used here in a social constructionist sense: a linguistic devise and marker (see Moreton-Robinson 2006).

(i.e. valid) and afforded legitimacy. Whiteness is in many ways performative, self-perpetuating and

self-legitimizing (see Nicoll 2002). Biopower manifests across whiteness in its nonawareness of its

own implications, and how these shape perceptions of its implications amongst those who seek to

expose it. What emerges here is an understanding of how whiteness “configures and colonizes most

folks’ mind[s] in” western societies (Harper 2012). In essence, this happens through their own

actions, in the social milieu of collective whiteness and concomitant complicity.

Those that do not fit within whiteness’ constructed boundaries of acceptability—including those

that threaten or challenge white hegemony—are identified, and positioned, as deviant and

precluded from consideration. This is a similar and distinct machination of whiteness as biopolitical:

it acts to (re)construct the other, and at the same time reinforces the boundaries of being white.

There are direct discursive (a reinforcing of white hegemony) and governmental (self-regulatory)

implications. What this means is that the constructed normativity of whiteness constitutes white

subjectivity and at the same time circumscribes different possibilities. Haggis’ description of

whiteness as ‘a plurality of complicity and contestation that is always already pulled together into a

cohesive hegemony’ identifies these implications, indicating how whiteness is in many ways

unmarked and nonconsidered by those who are positioned as white, whilst at the same time directly

visible to those who are otherwise (relationally) situated and positioned (2004a at 27).

The notion that whiteness is unmarked, the degree and depth of this, to those positioned as white is

contested. For example A. Breeze Harper reflects:

‘I have heard of the argument that whites just don’t “see” their white privilege and/or are “confused” about how it is that racism is still a problem in the USA. I say bullshit. White American has a possessive investment in whiteness and they know it, vegan or not’ (2012).

The apparent invisibility of possessive investment to those who benefit from whiteness has been

identified as an element of strategic (willful) ignorance.7 Another way to think of strategic ignorance

is as a practice of not knowing which is causal to and of whiteness. It is rooted in and a product of

the (non-perceived) relationality of whiteness. As Elizabeth Spelman notes, in reflecting on James

Baldwin’s (1993) The Fire Next Time, an influential 1960s publication on race relations in the USA:

“It is not so much that they know and don’t care, but that they don’t care to really know” (Spelman

2007: 125). There is an active not-knowing, leading to many aspects and implications of whiteness

as unmarked to those positioned as white. In other words the apparent invisibility of white privilege

7 See Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana’s (2007) edited volume Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance for detailed engagements with the concept, and some of the machinations of, strategic ignorance.

emerges through the performativity of whiteness, its isolationist and essentialist machinations.

Wendy Brown has reflected on Foucault’s understandings of power, specifically to do with what is

produced in relationships (i.e. white privilege) and what is regulated (i.e. whiteness), noting that

there is no sharp distinction between the two:

the forms of power that produce gender or class are themselves saturated with that production—they do not precede it. Indeed, it is this element of subject production that makes intelligible the very notions of masculinist power, or bourgeois power, as opposed to speaking about gender and class power simply in terms of rule by one group of people and the oppression of another. In the more conventional way of speaking about power as an instrument of domination interchangeable among groups and even individuals, power is cast as a (gender, class, and race) neutral means of achieving privilege and domination. Power is conceived as something held by particular individuals or groups, and this commodity status gives it independence from the bearer of it and the subject of power… Power in this pre-Foucaultian view is seen to locate subjects in a field of power but the field itself is not seen to produce the subjects it locates; it is not regarded as the very medium of emergence of those subjects (Brown 1997: 88).

To restate for the context here, Brown is identifying the means through which power is not seen as

emergent from whiteness whilst being constituted by and of whiteness (i.e. produced through

discourse). White privilege is seen as independent of being positioned as white (by those so

positioned), and thus the possessive investment in whiteness of those positioned as white noted by

Harper is rendered unmarked (or obscured) whilst being perpetuated.8 It is here we can locate the

ubiquity of whiteness to those positioned as white, and a starting point to explore it implications in

the everyday.

Nocella’s ‘intervention’

Having provided an outline (of some) of the manifestations and implications of whiteness—in a

broad and general sense—we can now explore and engage with some of the key themes in Nocella’s

intervention. Two of Nocella’s interlinked statements form the central element from which further

commentary emerges: ‘the issue of white hegemony within the movement has not been adequately

addressed’, and ‘animal advocates need to have a larger social justice framework’ (2012: 142).

In seeking to expose and challenge the implications of white hegemony in the animal advocacy

movement, Nocella introduces a question that is positioned as a cornerstone of what needs to be

reflected on (and returns to this question in the concluding section of his paper): ‘how to integrate

8 Harper similarly notes ‘that white Americans are collectively unaware of how the center stage in which they might find themselves does not reflect the reality of those who do not exist in such white privileged spaces of inclusion’ (Gruen, Harper & Adams 2012).

People of Color into white-dominated activist groups’ (Ibid.: 143).9 The question is introduced

following an excerpt from Angela P. Harris’ Should People of Color Support Animal Rights? The question

that forms the title of Harris’s paper is in reference to the ‘animal rights movement’ as being

‘perceived by many African American people as “a white thing”’ (2009: 15). Nocella includes

Harris’ identification of why the movement is seen as such: ‘advocates for animal rights often fail to

recognize the relevance of racism and racial justice to their work’ (Ibid.: 16). Central here is

Nocella’s talking around the question of ‘how to integrate People of Color into white-dominated

activist groups’ and how this is framed by Harris’ argument as he (re)presents it.

Harris’ (2009) exploration of the role of people of color in the animal rights movement is broad and

nuanced. Should People of Color Support Animal Rights? highlights that the actions of those positioned

as white (what may be seen incorrectly as inaction), do not create spaces for marginalised others.10

What is important to note is that, whilst exposing these implications of whiteness, a central theme of

Harris’s paper is that people of color should be engaged in animal issues irrespective of white

peoples actions. It is here that we can return to Nocella’s question, which he recounts as something

others have asked, and note how whiteness has shaped the question itself as he presents it.

Specifically, the question focuses on the actions of people of color (i.e. as opposed to those

positioned as white). Altering the question provides a means to fundamentally shift the focus:

whiteness needs to be brought front and centre.11 Changing the question locates the root of the

issue: exposing and providing a direct means to address the actions of those positioned as white

(those who are seen to dominate the animal advocacy movement), which create barriers to

participation for (marginalized) others. The question posed by Nocella in seeking to address a

desire for a more inclusive movement focuses on the implications and not the underlying issues.

In stepping away from the central question of Nocella’s paper, a key theme is that of

intersectionality—itself a foundational element of CAS—in seeking to develop a broad and inclusive

justice-seeking paradigm across society. The issue of intersectionality is a broad challenge across

academic disciplines (engaged scholarship) and social justice movements. A key task is to provide

depth, rigor, coherence and nuance when engaging with the intersection of socially (and culturally)

9 The term ‘people of color’ is reproduced and used here in the same way as Hariss and Nocella present it. The term itself is not without issue, which in many ways acts to reinforce whiteness as normative (i.e. those postioned as white are without color, as in normal; those ‘of color’ are relationally positioned as deviant in the sociological sense). 10 In making this argument, Harris engages with the common origin and logic of racism and speciesism. The notion of ‘rights’ and the implied dualism of the term ‘animals’ (as distinct from human) are also reflected on. 11 This can be read as a paradox of centering and decentering whiteness (see Salter in press: 37-42).

constructed categories.12 In seeking to tease out multiple formations and intersections of

oppression, maintaining an awareness of the complexity of intersectional analysis is essential in

order to not (re-, co-)produce what can amount to simplistic or reductionist accounts. In painting

with a broad brush to highlight multiple visible formations of oppression (with what appear to

interlinked or common elements), or accounts-claims of living ‘intersectionality in practice’

(Nocella 2012: 143), there is significant potential to get lost in visible details, to lose sight of

specificity and the value of deeper reflection. This is a key challenge for those positioned as white

who are engaging with whiteness.

Of crucial import to recount here whiteness is performative: being positioned as white and living

whiteness acts hegemonically to reinforce and perpetuate its own (i.e. self-legitimizing, if at times

unmarked) assumptions. The significance here is that the claim of being intersectional is a claim of

being free from (the implications of) and existing outside of whiteness. Such a positioning also acts

to enable the claimer to hide behind the claim. Constructed as authoritarian speech, the statement is

performative (Butler 1993: 225), producing a ‘performative assumption of perspective’ (Nicoll 2002

at 18). In essence, the act reinforces the claim, the claim reinforces the act. What results is a

disavowal (and an ability to do so) of concomitant complicity.

In many ways, seeking to situate oneself as being aware of all of the implications of whiteness is

about seeking to ‘resolve’ the uncomfortableness produced by an awareness of the implications of

being white.13,14 What is required of those positioned as white is “a continuing effort to reveal, analyse

and challenge the multiple ways in which whiteness is internally incoherent, differentiated,

hyphenated” and in a number of ways unseen and unmarked (via performativity) in our own actions

(Haggis 2004a at 27). To explain this another way, there is a doubleness of whiteness situated in a

plurality of complicity and contestation, directly expressed, normatively, in its own hegemony—the

lived experience of being white. Implicit here is a required recognition of whiteness as a situated

knowledge (epistemologically and ontologically) and not something that can be simply disowned:

those positioned as white are not free to roam (in and) out of whiteness (Ibid. at 27).

12 This is an essential question if CAS is to be seen as having disciplinary status (i.e. specific value), whilst challenging implications of disciplinarity. See Brown (1997) for a similar reflection with regards to Women’s Studies. 13 See Gelder (2000) and Haggis (2004a) for detailed and specific engagements. Both reflections highlight specific implications emerging from attempts to expose whiteness and seek to move beyond it. 14 A reviewer of this paper noted that looking at Nocella’s piece as situational, as coming from a non-mainstream lived experience of whiteness (taking into account disability as shaping perspective and insight), has the potential to afford further, and a little less critical, nuance to the analysis presented here.

A recognition of the discursive power and situatedness of whiteness, of an inability to simply roam

away from it, provides an implicit challenge to broad and essentialising notions of whiteness.15 What

this challenge highlights is how specificity is lost in broad and reductionist accounts of whiteness

and, at times, attempts at intersectionality. For example, in seeking to draw parallels between

whiteness and speciesism—in which there are many, Nocella essentialises a number of implications

of both systems of domination. Specifically, he extends essentialising tendencies to the constructed

(false) dualism of human-nonhuman animal:

Every human is a dominator to nonhuman animals, even if they are anti-speciesist comparable to every white person is a racist, even if the white person is an anti-racist (2012: 149)

Following this logic, by existing, and being socially positioned as white, one becomes a racist. In

reflecting on exactly what this implies and direct implications for progressive politics (and

intersectional analysis), we can start with the essentialist notion that all white people are racist. The

issue becomes about the person and not the act (i.e. the field of power, recalling the excerpt from

Brown on Foucault). Approaching such a notion from a perspective of effectiveness—of seeking

effective ways to work towards social change—we can note some specific ramifications: if being

racist is a key element of existing (for someone positioned as white), this effectively precludes

challenging and ultimately ending racism. Racism is identified-positioned as embodied in a person’s

existence. It is part of them, as opposed to something they do and the field of power in which they

are situated. By way of corollary, identifying actions as being racist opens up avenues to challenge

racism as what people do, not who they are.

In reflecting on actions as racist, it is also important to note here that racism does not require intent.

This would appear to be what the above excerpt from Nocella’s intervention was seeking to

highlight: that well-meaning actions often have unmarked implications. These implications can be

unmarked as a result of strategic ignorance and/both social-structural factors. We can see a simple

example of the latter in colonial countries such as Australia and Canada: recent migrants directly

benefit from an ongoing denial of sovereignty (a key element of colonial whiteness). These migrants

themselves may be marginalized by whiteness in myriad ways, yet also benefit from it.

Paralleling the essentialising of racism as embodied, describing every human as a dominator of

nonhuman animals is littered with similar implications. If we consider the opening statement of

15 In referring to essentialising notions of whiteness, I am not referring to biological reductionist accounts (i.e. ‘white’ skin), rather broad claims about whiteness as a politicoeconomic system that reify specific assumptions-actions as embodied in those positioned as white.

Nocella’s intervention that it ‘is directed toward people who identify as white within the animal

advocacy movement in the U.S. and Canada’, we can note some distinction between a grand

narrative and a level of situatedness in such labeling-positioning. We may deduce that this is about

the field of power, yet as with the essentialising implications of describing all people positioned as

white as racist, what is missing is an engagement with the field of power as producing the subjects it

locates and situates. The direct implications of reductionism in seeking to draw a simple parallel

between whiteness and speciesism reduce the potential effectiveness of the parallel.

A key, if unintended implication of the parallel, is perhaps the most striking. As with the

identification of those positioned as white as racist, the inference of embodiment of dominance as

opposed to in actions (and the field of power as situating) acts to normalize such actions as

behaviors wrapped up in actually existing (i.e. racism becomes something not what white people do,

rather what white people are). The domination of nonhuman animals becomes something that is

directly tied to being a human as opposed to an action structured in the domination of western

constructions of the animal other. There is an apparent contradiction to the essentialist claim

presented later in Nocella’s intervention: ‘Being a human animal and living in a colonialized

industrialized country allows human animals to dominate nonhuman animals’ (2012: 150). We can

identify a level awareness of existence being structured (i.e. by a field of power), which enables and

normalises the domination of nonhuman animals—this is quite different to domination as

embodied.

In locating essentialism in inferring domination as embodied in what it is to be a human, we can also

note what appears to be an inconsistency in Nocella’s broad attempts at illustrating the benefits of

an intersectional approach through identification of multiple visible formations of oppression.

Preceding the description of ‘every human [as] a dominator to nonhuman animals’, with the parallel

of racism as embodied, there is brief introduction to the notion of working with other species. The

term with is an important distinction in how it is constructed. In challenging the actions and

structures of non-profit organizations—producing what appears to be an unintentional juxtaposition

of very broad-generalist and very specific critiques—Nocella states

...just as it would be problematic if an organization dedicated to ending racism [is] staffed [by] all white employees, it is equally troublesome that all animal advocacy organizations are run and employed by those from the very species oppressing nonhuman animals (2012: 145).

In what we might view, irrespective of the intent, as seeking to draw on a well-established critique of

speaking for, I identify what emerges as a poststructural-anthropomorphic dalliance.16 On the surface

the parallel seems quite ludicrous: can nonhuman animals be employed; can nonhuman animals be

employed in a non-dominating way; can nonhuman animals run an organization calling for their

emancipation (and moving beyond this enables a more thorough reflection)? Whereas we might

think of George Orwell’s (1996) Animal Farm, Jason Hribal’s (2010) Fear of the Animal Planet: The

Hidden History of Animal Resistance is introduced by Nocella as an example of ‘interspecies dialogue’ in

working towards emancipation. As the title indicates, Hribal’s text is filled with accounts of

numerous examples of nonhuman animals resisting across more than a century. We may see a level

of equivalence between Fear of the Animal Planet and Howard Zinn’s (2003) A people's history of the

United States, 1492-present—yet there is a key inescapable distinction. Can humans do other than

speak (and act) for nonhuman animals? Is speaking with or for nonhuman animals not about

ourselves as well? Any inference to speaking with embodies substantive elements of

anthropomorphism—the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman animals. We can quickly

note two implications: an assumption that human-like characteristics fit the embodiment and

experience of nonhuman animals, and that the embodiment and experience of nonhuman animals is

limited to human-like characteristics. As Gillian Beer notes, this is a longstanding issue and a ‘central

paradox for literature concerning itself with animal’:

Because human language inevitably starts out from our own conditions, it cannot avoid inclining towards the human and towards our systems of explanation (2005: 313)

In essence, we ascribe our own meanings. Orwell’s Animal Farm is ‘scarcely about animals’, in that it

is presented, and is constituted by attributions of human characteristics. It is here that interest

ultimately rests (Ibid.: 316)? Could not we say the same of Hribal’s Fear of the Animal Planet? In

moving nonhuman animals from being an absent referent (Adams 2000: 67)—a claim that can be

labeled at Animal Farm—when and where do we move (further) into anthropomorphism? It is

important to note here the process of anthropomorphizing is a field of power that shapes human

perceptions (as a direct outcome of the attribution of human characteristics to other animals): it is

about us. Perceptions of nonhuman animals are similarly perceptions of us, which have social and

political ramifications (Fudge 2002: 8; 2005: 158). As Beer reflects, ‘Is it not more honest to avoid

claiming understanding?’ (2005: 316). Drawing a parallel with critical whiteness studies and

critiques of western epistemology and ontology, incommensurabilities exist between western 16 bell hooks (1989: 16), Nicoll (2002 at 9 ) and Tully (1997) each engage with the implications of speaking to/for and with. See also Salter (in press).

constructions of the animal other, the field of power within which humans are situated and

produced, and nonhuman animal subjectivities (see Haggis 2004b). What emerges here is that we

cannot (presume to) know.

Recognition of an inability to speak for, of seeking to avoid a claim of understanding, appears to be

an underlying theme of Nocella’s comments on the staffing of advocacy organizations. A question

that emerges here is one of both representing other animals (can we, should we) and of acting to

challenge their exploitation. The latter can fall within a conundrum, an inescapability rooted in

Nocella’s dalliance, sharing parallels with those positioned as white who actively seek to undermine

whiteness.

Naama Harel has sought to identify what we might consider a liminal space co-located by the

anthropomorphized other animal in conversation-interaction with the human (represented in

literature): “partial anthropomorphism functions as an instrument which helps to understand the

nonhuman viewpoint” (2009: 13). What can emerge are both literal and allegoric reflections on the

animal other: a multilevel understanding of the (constructed in dominance) relationship between

humans and other animals. From this perspective, Animal Farm can be read as being both about

humans (through allegory) and about humans and the animal other, rather than being scarcely about

other animals as Beer argues. Can a level of anthropomorphism, or anthropomorphic thinking, have

significant importance? What value can careful anthropomorphism produce? There is value in

Hribal’s documenting of animal ‘resistance’, and it shapes our perceptions—again this brings up to

the notion that it is about us.

Amanda Rees (2007) has reflected on such ideas in examining ‘popularized accounts of

primatological research in the field’ and the experiences of the researchers.17 The researchers

involved expressed value in the process of doing research, of thinking of the animal other in some

ways outside the constructed human-nonhuman dualism: criticism of such approaches often seek to

(re)construct boundaries, epistemologically and ontologically, and (re)stabilize this constructed

dualism.18 In many ways ‘speculative’ anthropomorphism exposes and can undermine constructed

elements of the human-nonhuman dualism through the process of cognitive dissonance. What we

can draw directly from Harel and Rees’ analysis is that the construction of the dualism is far from

being just about the animal other. The dualism is enmeshed in fields of power, with both the human 17 The, often explicitly anthropocentric and human chauvinist, nature and basis for the research—and how this is perceived—should be questioned. For example, ‘primates were originally studied in the hope that the simpler structures of heir societies would provide insight into more complex human communities’ (Rees 2007: 896). 18 Thomas Gieryn’s (1995) work of demarcation, creating and recreating boundaries, engages with the process as praxis.

and animal other produced in the processes (human-nonhuman; nature-culture). To state another

way, the construction of the human subject position (as above animals) is a direct product of the

dualism.

In reflecting on Nocella’a criticism of ‘animal advocacy organizations... run and employed by those

from the very species oppressing nonhuman animals’—specifically in reflecting on effectiveness and

moving forward, we can note two things. Construction of the animal other is a human endeavor:

responsibility for addressing this rests with us. In many ways it is about us, and something we need

to change in ourselves and our social structures. Emergent from this, should we not have advocacy

organizations working towards such ends? More specifically, we can once again draw parallels with

critical whiteness studies. Whiteness is as much about the positioning of people as white as it is

about the relationally constructed other. White people should be challenging whiteness for their

own sake. To approach the issue otherwise is packaged with a number of implications, such as the

politics of guilt (Nicoll 2004 at 21; Ahmed 2005). Rather than considering the (human) staffing of

animal advocacy organization as troublesome, would not seeking to engage with their approach be

more prudent (issues with the not-for-profit system notwithstanding, see INCITE 2007)? If we can

reduce this to a simple statement, if we explicitly identify the focus of ‘animal advocacy’ as exposing

the situating of the animal other as a human endeavor, and to change this, implicit is that this is not

about the animal other, it is about us. The question about staffing thus starts to fall away.

On intervening

What I have referred to as the politics of guilt is often a precursor to the notion of intervening, and

the relational construction of the self in such situations. Hage’s (1995) The Limits of ‘Anti-Racist

Sociology’ exposes how the positioning of other peoples actions as needing intervention (i.e. ‘bad’)

also positions the intervenor as ‘good’. Situating oneself as good, irrespective of the level of intent,

has a tendency to position oneself and one’s actions as above many of the implications of that which

they are seeking to challenge. More importantly, the outcome is that such an approach limits the

potential for exposing and undermining key elements of that which they seek to expose and

challenge (i.e. whiteness in Nocella’s intervention).

A focus on processes, in contrast to individuals (similarly moving away from essentialist

implications of being white and therefore racist, i.e. as embodied in existence), enables an

identification of everyday interactions and practices that themselves encapsulate racist assumptions

and have racist implications (often unmarked to those undertaking-making them). What emerges is

a shift away from the performativity of positioning oneself as the good white anti-racist intervenor.

Rather than placing oneself on a pedestal as a (self-appointed) exemplar of living ‘intersectionality

in practice’ (Nocella 2012: 143), engaging with the process of seeing oneself as such and how we

may come to (try to) position ourselves in such a way enables a reflection on the machinations and

implications of whiteness and concomitant complicity in the everyday, including those rendered

unmarked through the performativity of such self-positioning. By way of example, we can explore

Fiona Nicoll reflections in 'Are you calling me a racist?': Teaching critical whiteness theory in indigenous

sovereignty. In responding to a student’s aggressive response to a challenging discussion about

unearned privilege, with an associated identification of (largely non-considered) subjectivity, Nicoll

situated herself alongside the class on the ‘shared ground of whiteness’:

I’m not implying that you are racist, any more or any less than I am. What I want you to consider is that you and I share a common ground as white Australian women and that the subject position ‘middle class white woman’ has not only shaped our heritage but continues to influence our everyday practices (Nicoll 2004 at 21).

Implicit in Nicoll’s response was a seeking to not be positioned, or to not position oneself, ‘as an

ideal role model of anti-racist practice’ (Ibid. at 28). The basis for this is bound up within the

purpose of critical whiteness studies pedagogy, and I would argue extends into intersectional

analyses. By situating herself alongside this student, and others in the class, there was another

substantive outcome—one that the framing of Nocella’s intervention renders unavailable. There is

both an implicit and explicit ‘refusal to embody moral virtue and perform an exemplary role as the

“good”’ white person, relationally constructed-positioned against the ‘bad’ racist white person (Ibid.

at 21). This disavowal directly enables a focus on (shared) processes, rather than racism being

embodied in an essentialist sense.

Nicoll also identifies an (paradoxical) implication of the experience of white guilt-shame: isolation.

We should resist such individualizing tendencies, including seeking to resolve such discomfort.

Situating oneself as being in a position to intervene into the actions of others emerges from seeking

to resolve, as affects of guilt. What is lost is an embrace of the discomfort that a (partial) awareness

of being implicated in whiteness produces, and that whiteness is a field of power, not an

embodiment that we are free to roam (in and) out of. Specifically, the aim of engaging with

whiteness in theory and praxis—as a collective project, ‘should be to unsettle white subjectivity

rather than create opportunities for individual confession, catharsis and redemption’ (Ibid. at 30).

Positioning oneself as good, as intervening, creates a false subjectivity of confession and

redemption—relationally constructed against an essentialized ‘bad’ other. We can identify these

elements in Nocella’s intervention, as seeking a means to create a position for himself above the

implications of whiteness; creating a space of some comfort through references to a self-

identification of (some) unearned privilege (see Nocella 2012: 143-4). The (limited) awareness

itself is enough, a symptom of the concomitant complicity in and of whiteness (see Gelder 2000 at

6; Moreton-Robinson 2003: 27). A key outcome is the maintenance of strategic ignorance: a level of

intersectionality limited to specific terms, terms set by those who privilege from such a restriction.

This is both active and passive, and in many ways (performatively) rooted in western, patriarchal

and white notions of being able to know everything.19

The relational self-positioning explicit in Nocella’s intervention contrasts directly with Nicoll’s

approach. In seeking to expose subjectivity and concomitant complicity in whiteness, Nicoll resisted

constructing a false dualism. Whereas Nocella’s positioning produces a position of comfort through

the construction of a good/bad dualism, Nicoll’s response embraced the uncomfortable engagement

necessary for grounded, inclusive and justice-seeking intersectionality. Hage, in drawing from

Bourdieu's aphorism “Good intentions so often make bad sociology”, noted how a friend/enemy

logic can emerge that restricts an ability to engage and develop means to explore actions beyond

labeling some as good, others as bad. The emergent logic acts to construct dualistic boundaries upon

which claims are staked, rather than “foster[ing] argumentation, painstaking reasoning and the

primacy of the desire to understand and explain” (1995: 71). Construction of this dualism renders

the protagonist “unable to develop an ethic of understanding... becom[ing] perturbed by a wish to

condemn and deplore and even detest” (Ibid.: 72). What is at stake is legitimacy, attempting to

position oneself to avoid, or associate others with, the stigma of racist implications being tied to

ones action. We need to look beyond what might be considered extreme polar constructions here,

recalling the ways and means through which normative ideas manifest themselves, often in

unmarked ways. For example, in Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial

Justice, a “book about racism for white people” Paul Kivel notes similar implications. He refers to

the construction of such divisions as ineffective, being predicated on a notion of superiority (2002:

13-14). Positioning other people as lacking intersectionality, or acting in ways counter to what one

perceives as their living ‘intersectionality in practice’, is to identify others as deviant. Directly

emergent is the situating of oneself as good, as better. More importantly, in doing so, we can (and

do) lose sight of how we are ourselves implicated in systems of oppression. The construction of a

good/bad dualism has a normalising tendency in that it does little to challenge the hegemony of

19 See Moreton-Robinson (1999) for an exploration of the implications of the construction of (white, patriarchal) knowability and the self-ascribed cognitive authority of white ways and knowing and seeing.

dominance. In effect, this undermines the efficacy of what we can label as supportive actions,

irrespective of intent.

CAS and intersectionality as praxis

This paper has formed a reflection on assumptions embedded in Nocella’s ‘intervention’, and a

number of challenges faced (and to be faced) by those seeking to engage with and build on Critical

Animal Studies (CAS) scholarship. Intersectionality is a central element of CAS, as well as all forms

of theory and praxis working towards progressive social change. A key challenge in seeking to do

intersectionality is to provide a depth of analysis that is rooted in more than what are visible details,

and an acceptance that there are many interlinked issues and forms of oppression that we do not

see—unmarked and/both rooted in our own strategic (willful) ignorance. Seeking to engage

requires an admission that we are all implicated in forms of dominance, and that the implications

emerge from dominance as a field of (discursive) power that shapes all of our actions. Recognition

of our own concomitant complicity, that whiteness, speciesism and other forms of oppression-

domination in society are actions and not (essentialist) embodiments situate us on a shared ground.

Approaching domination and forms of oppression in such a way reduces the potential for the

construction of a good/bad dualism. An awareness of our own situatedness, alongside vigilant

reflexivity and an embrace of the uncomfortableness this produces, assists in exposing our own

strategic ignorance and increases our ability to see unmarked manifestations of dominance in our

everyday actions—and their implications, irrespective of intent.

In seeking to challenge whiteness and speciesism, the focus should be on those positioned as white

and our species—our actions. The question ‘how to integrate People of Color into white-dominated

activist groups’ should be reconsidered and reframed to focus not on how to integrate marginalized

others, but to reflect on what (unmarked) barriers are being constructed by those situated in

dominance. It is not about people of color and their actions, rather it is about the (in)actions and

performativity of those positioned as white which create such situations. For example: what barriers

are we (un)intentionally creating to broader participation? What should we be doing to create

inviting-accessible spaces that others may wish to participate in? To state another way, we need to

look in the mirror to see where the work needs to be done. Claims of living intersectionality do little

but reinforce the performativity of whiteness, and the relational construction of those who you-we

do not see as acting in accord with your-our own awareness as relationally bad (deviant). What is

lost is a nuanced analysis of the intersectionality of oppression, with the potential for the

development of an inclusive justice-seeking paradigm significantly impacted.

Accepting that the ways in which whiteness intersects into the animal advocacy movement is

routinely little different to how whiteness manifests itself across society provides a solid foundation

from which to expose and challenge white hegemony in CAS. The implications are diverse and

widespread, and as much as we lay claim to awareness we routinely fail to recognize these in our own

actions. Addressing these issues are as important as engaging with manifestations of speciesist

oppression.

Credits

I would like to thank Richard Kahn, Robert Carr and a number of unnamed others for their valuable

comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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