research

Uncivilising the future : imagining non-speciesism

Abstract

We live in a world where animals are killed and abused in numbers that are entirely beyond comprehension. This killing is ubiquitous and omnipresent, and yet largely invisible to most people. Once we come to the realisation that the normalisation of animal oppression is something that we oppose, envisioning futures that abandon “speciesism” requires an almost unimaginable rethinking of our current society. Yet, resistance and alternative practices do exist. These forces consist of alternative opinions, attitudes, practices, senses, meanings, and values which are not considered to be the norm; however, these can somehow still be accommodated and tolerated within a particularly effective and dominant culture. In this modest approach towards non-speciesist utopias that invites serious moral consideration of animals as the most marginalised beings of all, I aim to bring those under-emphasised, hidden, and alternative perspectives to light in order to make them more valid and more real as practices that counter hegemony. By paying attention to existing philosophies, personal experiences, emotional accounts, and shared thoughts, this text highlights alternatives and possibilities for artists (or others) to imagine and shape futures that are utopian—not just for humans, but for animals as well.peer-reviewe

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