Calling on the love for animals in the black community

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African Americans, animal abuse, animal activism, animal advocacy, animal cruelty, black violence, human-animal bond, human-animal relationships

I just received this through twitter: Memphis woman charged with aggravated animal cruelty.  Memphis is my home town, and the animal cruelty immediately caught my eye.  This is nothing new for Memphis.  In fact, some months ago, I wrote a post on a series of animal cruelty charges, majority in Memphis, all involving black men.  This time it’s a black woman. 

One Idealist’s Insecurity and the Story of Tortoise-Shelly

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animal behavior, animal liberation, cats, creative narrative, human-animal bond, human-animal relationships, infancy, spay/neuter

Shelly lifted herself from her fetal posture.  It’s after dawn and her hunger pains began to settle in.  Her wide yellow eyes looked toward her companions who had not yet risen, but one of them was suspiciously moving around in bed.  Though she had been awake for a while, Shelly extended her rump into the air, stretching herself as if her body were being pulled by invisible thread tugged at opposite ends.  She walked onto the bed and lowered her nose onto her shuffling companion’s face.  Just as she suspected, her companion was not fully asleep.  Despite her companion’s eyes remaining closed, her shallow breaths and mouth movements were enough indication for Shelly to wake her up.

Animal Oppression: An Ecological Approach

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abolitionism, autonomy, human-animal bond, interdependence, justice, liberation, mutual reciprocity, mutuality, oppression, relationships

What do we mean when we refer to animal oppression?  How does oppression of animals operate?  How would animal liberation overcome animal oppression?  What does animal liberation mean?  I use the phrases “animal liberation” and “animal oppression” on a regular basis, to the point where I had to take a step back and assess what I meant from these phrases.  Before formulating my own conceptualization of these terms, I wanted to know the brief history of “oppression” and “liberation” and how activists and philosophers describe them.

Encounters with Animal Minds: Lessons in Animality (Part 1)

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animal bonds, animal consciousness, animal minds, animality, Barbara Smuts, consciousness, human-animal bond, human-animal relationships, interspecies communication, intersubjectivity, self/other

Barbara Smuts and Safi

I just recently read an article by Barbara Smuts, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.  Unlike many articles I come across with the phrase “animal minds” in the title, this article was far from being a pretentious imposition of human privilege on nonhuman animal experience.  In fact, I would go so far as to say this article was amazing and profound and greatly contributes to an emergent body of knowledge in western thought surrounding the animal condition and reconceptualizing interspecies animal relationships.

The detailed narrative of her experiences working with baboons and chimpanzees and her intimate relationship with her dog companion Safi are wonderful explorations into animality,  intersubjectivity, and animal bonds.  The intimacy developed in her experiences confirmed that she “did indeed belong to this planet.”  In this post, I will focus primarily on her work surrounding animality.