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  3. Compulsory humanity : species, ability, and the trouble with "animal intelligence"
Title

Compulsory humanity : species, ability, and the trouble with "animal intelligence"

    Item Description
    Limited Access
    The author(s) chose to restrict access to this thesis to current Whitman students, faculty, and staff. Please log in to view it.
    Linked Agent
    Creator (cre): Shemitz, Arthur Benjamin
    Advisor (adv): McDermott, Lydia
    Department (dpt): Whitman College. Gender Studies
    Date
    May 10, 2017
    Graduation Year
    2017
    Abstract

    Critiquing animal rights theorists' appropriation of disability for the purpose of argument, and drawing on the work of Adrienne Rich, Robert McRuer, and Alison Kafer, I theorize a system of "compulsory humanity" that illuminates the conceptual interconnectedness of humanity and cognitive rationalism. In my primary case study, I explore how pragmatic animal rights strategies that seek to compare nonhuman animals to neurotypical humans fail to achieve justice for animals and can actually backfire against animal rights goals. I then unpack how "animal intelligence" discourses that perpetuate mind/body dualism can be resisted through a new "octopus feminism" that rejects inadequate liberal feminist strategies. Focusing on the ways that the mandate to possess normative human cognition has marginalized both nonhuman animals and people with disabilities, and writing in the activist tradition of "Nothing About Us Without Us!", I argue for a new coalitional politics centering around the theory of neurodiversity that seeks liberation for both groups.

    Subject
    Animal Rights Coalition
    Animal rights movement
    Human beings
    Animal intelligence
    Rationalism
    Human-animal relationships -- United States
    Animals
    People with disabilities
    Civil rights -- Animals
    Comparative studies -- Cross-species comparison
    Language and culture
    Academic theses
    Whitman College 2017 -- Dissertation collection -- Gender Studies
    Geographic Subject
    United States
    Genre
    Theses
    Extent
    121 pages
    Permanent URL
    http://works.whitman.edu/072720171337
    Rights
    http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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