Being and Swine

The End of Nature (As We Knew It)

Fahim Amir, Geoffrey C. Howes, Corvin Russell

• Publisher: Between the Lines
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781771134828
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Essays in der Soziologie

Forget everything you think you know about nature. Fahim Amir's award-winning book takes pure delight in posing unexpected questions: Are animals victims of human domination, or heroes of resistance? Is nature pristine and defenceless, or sentient and devious? Is being human really a prerequisite for being political?

In a world where birds on Viagra punch above their weight and termites hijack the heating systems of major cities, animals can be recast as vigilantes, agitators, and public enemies in their own right. Under Amir's magic spell, pigs transform from slaughterhouse innocents into rioting revolutionaries, pigeons from urban pests into unruly militants, honeybees from virtuous fuzzballs into shameless centrefold models for eco-capitalism. As paws, claws, talons, and hooves seize the means of production, Being and Swine spirals higher and higher into a heady thesis that becomes more convincing by the minute.

At the heart of Amir's writing is a deep optimism and bracingly fresh reading of Marxist, post-colonial, and feminist theory, building upon the radical scholarship of Donna J. Haraway and others. Contrarian, whip-smart, and wildly innovative, no other book will laugh at your convictions quite like this one.

Notes

Introduction

1. Cf. Marilyn Strathern, Partial Connections (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004).

2. Karl Marx, Letters from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2004) (MECW), vol. 3: Marx and Engels 1833–1844, 145.

3. Anett Laue, Das sozialistische Tier: Auswirkungen der SED-Politik auf gesellschaftliche Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse in der DDR (1949–1989) (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2017).

4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, MECW, vol. 6: Marx and Engels 1845–1848, 513.

5. Laue, Das sozialistische Tier, 294ff.

6. Laue, Das sozialistische Tier, 311.

7. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “G. Fr. Daumer, ‘Die Religion des neuen Weltalters. Versuch einer combinatorisch-aphoristischen Grundlegung’, 2 Bde., Hamburg 1850” [Reviews from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, “Politisch-Ökonomische Revue” No. 2, February 1850], MECW, vol. 7, 241–46, 242.

8. Will Potter, Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement under Siege (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011).

9. MECW, vol. 35: Marx, 187–208, 188. (The original sentence is literally: “. . . that he makes the cells in his head, before he makes them in wax.”—Tr.)

10. Cf. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, and Modernity (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002), 45.

11. Maria Kaika, “Dams as Symbols of Modernization: The Urbanization of Nature between Geographical Imagination and Materiality,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96,2 (2006), 276–301.

12. David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital (New York: Verso, 2010), 112.

13. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 46, 67, 73.

14. John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” in About Looking (New York: Bloomsbury, 1980), 1–26. Cf. Jonathan Burt, “John Berger’s ‘Why Look at Animals?’: A Close Reading,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 9,2 (2005), 203–218.

15. For some exceptions that confirm the rule, see Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance (Oakland: AK Press, 2011); Jonathan L. Clark, “Labourers or Lab Tools? Rethinking the Role of Lab Animals in Clinical Trials,” in The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre ed. Nik Taylor and Richard Twine (London: Routledge, 2014), 139–66; Ted Benton, Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights & Social Justice (London/New York: Verso, 1993); Lawrence Wilde, “‘The Creatures, Too, Must Become Free’: Marx and the Animal/Human Distinction,” Capital & Class 72 (2000), 37–53; Agnieszka Kowalczyk, “Mapping Non-human Resistance in the Age of Biocapital,” in The Rise of Critical Animal Studies, 183–200.

16. Marx and Engels, MECW, vol. 50, 466.

17. Marx and Engels, MECW, vol. 50, 466.

Pigeon Politics

1. Woody Allen’s Film Stardust Memories (1980), to which this political metaphor is often erroneously attributed, contains the following dialogue between Sandy (Allen) and Dorrie, when a pigeon flies into her apartment. Dorrie: “Hey, that’s so pretty. A pigeon!” Sandy: “Geez, no. It’s not pretty at all. They’re, they’re, they’re rats with wings.” Dorrie: “They’re wonderful. No! It’s probably a good omen. It’ll bring us good luck.” Sandy: “No, no. Get it out of here. It’s probably one of those killer pigeons.”

2. For the sake of readability, especially in the historical passages, references have been dispensed with in the text here. The information given here can be located in the following works and texts: Horst Marks, Unsere Haustauben (Wittenberg: Ziemsen, 1971); Andrea Dee, Eine vergessene Leidenschaft: Von Tauben und Menschen (Wien: Ueberreuter, 1994); Richard Johnston and Marián Janiga, Feral Pigeons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Daniel Haag-Wackernagel, Die Taube: Vom heiligen Vogel der Liebesgöttin zur Strassentaube (Basel: Verlag Schwabe & Co, 1998); David Glover and Marie Beaumont, Racing Pigeons (Marlborough: Crowood, 1999); Annette Rösener, Die Stadttaubenproblematik: Ursachen, Entwicklungen, Lösungen; eine Literatur-Übersicht (Aachen: Shaker, 1999); Andrew Blechman, Pigeons (New York: Grove Press, 2006); Simon J. Bronner, “Contesting Tradition: The Deep Play and Protest of Pigeon Shoots,” Journal of American Folklore 118 (2005), 409–452; Eva Rose, Peter Nagel, and Daniel Haag-Wackernagel, “Spatio-temporal Use of the Urban Habitat by Feral Pigeons (Columba livia),” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 60,2 (2006), 242–54; Günther Vater, “Bestandsverminderung bei verwilderten Haustauben. Teil 1: Bilanz mitteleuropäischer Stadtverwaltungen,” Bundesgesundheitsblatt–Gesundheitsforschung–Gesundheitsschutz 42,12 (1999), 911–21; Courtney Humphries, Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan—and the World (New York: Collins, 2008).

3. Hans-Georg Soeffner, “Der fliegende Maulwurf (Der taubenzüchtende Bergmann im Ruhrgebiet)—totemistische Verzauberung und technologische Entzauberung der Sehnsucht” in Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), 431–53, 439.

4. For an amusing literary portrayal of the battle against pigeons—from the point of view of the pigeons—see Patrick Neates, The London Pigeon Wars (London: Penguin, 2004...