How the Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion and the ... · Bestia sacer is a mirrored other of homo...

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156853011X590051

Society & Animals 19 (2011) 407-424 brill.nl/soan

How the Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion and the Neuroscience of Dehumanization/Rehumanization

Can Contribute to Animal Activists’ Strategies: Bestia Sacer II

Robin MackenzieUniversity of Kent, [email protected]

AbstractJuxtaposing the continental philosophy of inclusion/exclusion and the cognitive and affective neuroscience of dehumanization, infrahumanization, and rehumanization may inform animal activists’ strategies. Both fields focus upon how we decide who counts and who doesn’t. Deci-sions over who’s human (or like us) and who isn’t (i.e., who’s an animal, or not like us) are not simply about species membership but involve biopolitical value judgments over who we wish to include or exclude. Posthumanists seek to disrupt the biopolitics of inclusion/exclusion, partly to heal ethical and political relations between human and nonhuman animals. Calarco calls this jamming Agamben’s anthropological machine. Bestia sacer are those designated as included or excluded, moving among zones of humans, nonhuman animals, and things. Cognitive and affec-tive neuroscience describes how mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion function in dehumaniza-tion, infrahumanization, and rehumanization. Humans assign varying degrees of humanity to others according to in-group/out-group status in judgments open to manipulation. Investigating how these mechanisms operate in human perceptions of nonhuman animals may inform activist strategies, transforming ethical and political relations between humans and nonhuman animals and end the exclusion of bestia sacer.

KeywordsAgamben, anthropological machine, bestia sacer, biopolitics, cognitive and affective neurosci-ence, dehumanization and rehumanization, Esposito, nonhuman animals

Muslims—that was the name in the camp for people at the end of their tether . . . An un-human state . . . imagine being in the most miserable condition possible, a state so wretched, so humiliating, so totally abject . . . that it inspires neither pity nor compas-sion . . . only disgust or anger . . . Malnutrition ate up the bones and hollowed out the cheeks of the gipsy children.

—Aaron, 2008 (pp. 97-98)

408 R. Mackenzie / Society & Animals 19 (2011) 407-424

The truth is that we want to have our dogs (and cats) and eat them too . . . If we place animals beyond the pale of moral consideration, we can harvest their economic and instrumental benefits with a clear conscience, but we cannot simultaneously claim that these animals are members of our families, the subjects of profound emotional attachments, or sentient and cognitively sophisticated beings worthy of special treat-ment and protection. So, our solution to this dilemma is to compartmentalize—to allocate our moral obligations to some animals but not others—and to invent elabo-rate belief systems and “just-so stories” to explain why animals do not actually matter even when our gut instincts, our moral intuitions, tell us that they do. These are, of course, precisely the same techniques that people have used throughout history to justify the abuse and persecution of other humans.

—Serpell, 2009 (p. 644)

Introduction

Animal studies scholars seek to disrupt the human/nonhuman animal divide. Many find inspiration in Giorgio Agamben’s statement that “[i]t is more urgent . . . to ask in what way . . . has man been separated from non-man, and the animal from the human, than it is to take positions on the great issues, on so-called human rights and values” (Agamben, 2004, p. 16). Agamben’s description of how human and nonhuman animals have been separated is embodied in his image of what he calls the anthropological machine, the sym-bolic and material mechanisms embedded in discourses of scientists and phi-losophers that create taxonomies of inclusion and exclusion, according to contingent views of who should count and who should not (Agamben, 2004). His documentation of how ascriptions of animality are used to justify exclud-ing individual or groups of humans has not only illuminated Continental philosophy, political science, and international relations, but also inspired theorists like Matthew Calarco who seek a revisioning of human and nonhu-man animal ethical and political relations. Calarco argues that “what consti-tutes ‘the human’ and ‘the animal’ is not simply a scientific or ontological matter [but] deeply political and ethical . . . the distinction creates the opening for the exploitation of nonhuman animals (Calarco, 2007, p. 171). He con-siders that Agamben’s main question is “how best to jam the anthropological machine and create a post-humanist politics that is no longer governed by its ‘lethal and bloody’ logic” (Calarco, 2007, p. 175).

This article takes Calarco’s call to jam the anthropological machine as its starting point. It proceeds from the assumption that this jamming is best accomplished through an investigation into how the machine works. Accord-ingly, after providing some background on the anthropological machine, I turn to social neuroscience to illustrate some aspects of how it functions.

R. Mackenzie / Society & Animals 19 (2011) 407-424 409

Social neuroscience has established that humans assign varying degrees of humanity to others according to in-group/out-group status, but that such judgments are open to manipulation (Amodio, 2008; Harris & Fiske, 2008). I draw on the cognitive and affective neuroscience of how these mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion apply to humans’ dehumanization, infrahumaniza-tion, and rehumanization of other humans. I suggest that research from this perspective into human perceptions of nonhuman animals should provide valuable information for strategies seeking to improve ethical and political relations between human and nonhuman animals.

Both Agambenian scholarship and this thread in social neuroscience research tend to focus upon the mechanisms by which humans include or exclude one another, notably where the excluded are denigrated as nonhuman animals. I believe this scholarship can help us understand how different indi-viduals and groups of nonhuman animals are excluded and mistreated while subjected to similar judgments. I draw upon the figuration of bestia sacer, the excluded nonhuman animal (Mackenzie, 2009), to demonstrate how the boundaries of categories of exclusion are fluid and contingent. I conclude by assessing some implications for future research and activist strategies.

Agamben’s Anthropological Machine, Bestia Sacer, and Ethico-Political Relations between Human and Nonhuman Animals

Western philosophy classically divides living entities into zoe (biological life shared by all living entities) and bios (political life of humans who count as citizens) (Agamben, 1998). Agamben argues that the anthropological machine collapses this distinction in modern times where political governance over civic life becomes biopolitics. This form of governance seeks to control and manipulate zoe, or biological life, as well as bios, to create bare life (Agamben, 2004). Reducing citizens (bios) to biological life (zoe) is a feature of contem-porary biopolitics. Citizens’ reproductive practices and ways of life and dying are increasingly monitored and shaped like those of other forms of life sub-jected to cultivation for citizens’ use. Moreover, humans who are excluded from bios or citizenship (homo sacer) become reduced to zoe—depersonalized and deprived of civic and legal rights. Agamben argues that such humans, or homo sacer, become reduced to a state of bare life, where they continue to live as zoe, without the recognition and privileges associated with human citizens. The anthropological machine accomplishes this reduction of humans to bare life partly via ascriptions of animality that are aligned with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion: exclusion may be justified by denigrating the


excluded as despised nonhuman animals such as pigs, dogs, or cockroaches (Agamben, 2006). The machine creates anomalous invisibilized spaces through inclusionary/exclusionary mechanisms to confine bare life. Those deemed to be disposable, outside the protection of law, are often contained in zones of exception that function to maintain sovereign rule. By being outside yet inside the law, they support its power: the plight of those without rights tends to inspire citizens who wish to avoid losing their claims on the state to support state mechanisms ostensibly protecting citizens from the dispossessed. Dispos-sessed humans who are excluded from bios, or political life, and become homo sacer, treated as bare life, then become confined in zones of exception—e.g., slaves, refugees, prisoners in camps, and the moribund (Agamben, 1999).

What this means is that being a member of the human species does not automatically mean that one is included rather than excluded. This implies that nonhuman animals may become included rather than excluded. More-over, inconsistencies in how the anthropological machine operates may be used to challenge or jam it, in order to transform ethical and political relations between species. Agamben’s description of these mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion has been applied in this way to nonhuman animals and to human/nonhuman animals’ relations (Mackenzie, 2009). For instance, it can easily be demonstrated that the boundaries between the included (citizens, humans) and the excluded (noncitizens, nonhuman animals) are contingent, porous, and changing. Agamben envisages zones of exception operating as testing grounds for technologies of governance, to be extended to cover the citizenry outside the zones of exception (Agamben & Murray, 2008). Yet these tech-nologies may also be shared among and between human and nonhuman ani-mals. GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking was used to locate and manage nonhuman animals in the wild (Cagnacci & Urbano, 2008) before being deployed to provide surveillance of human movements, such as those of human hunters as well as the nonhuman animals who are hunted (Gearheard, Aipellee, & O’Keefe, 2010) Thus categories created and enforced through the anthropological machine can change. This process of categorization and recat-egorization is the central subject matter of this article. Whether one is charac-terized as mattering or not mattering matters, in that the consequences determine much of how we live. This applies to both human and nonhuman animals. Zones of exception may contain changing populations of not only humans but nonhuman animals as the included excluded. The technologies of governance, such as law, deployed in this context, shift the boundaries of inclusion/exclusion between and within species. More examples of this pro-cess are provided below in relation to the neuroscience of dehumanization and rehumanization.


How is this accomplished? Through the anthropological machine’s con-structions and normalizations, humans who wish to exclude other humans as the dispossessed or bare life create taxonomies which place the latter in inter-mediate zones of exception, where they fall between animal and full human status. Agamben exemplifies this in his figuration of homo sacer, a figure from classical history who has been excluded from the polis, stripped of status as fully human, so that he may be killed (like an animal), but not murdered (like a citizen). Bestia sacer is a mirrored other of homo sacer (Mackenzie, 2009). The terms designate the changing individuals and groups of nonhuman animals contained in zones of exception, constructed by the anthropological machine as counting or not counting: as quasi-human subjects of a life, animals, or things, according to contingent and strategic biomedical/legal taxonomies. The social neuroscience of dehumanization, infrahumanization and rehuman-ization demonstrates how homo sacer and bestia sacer are created, while hold-ing out hope for transformative recategorizations.

Biomedical/legal taxonomies are a central technology of governance consti-tuting the anthropological machine. How science, the law, and medicine clas-sify living entities matters, in part because it helps determine whether, and which, living entities count or not. We rely on classification to build taxono-mies instantiating perceptions and organizing knowledge. Categorization has varying degrees of ethico-political significance, from extremes such as listing elements within the periodic table to designating candidates for genocide (Mackenzie, 2008). Biomedical/legal taxonomies are a subset of somatech-nologies, or discursive mechanisms by which both animal and nonhuman ani-mal bodies are constituted (Mackenzie, 2009). However, Agamben’s vision of the anthropological machine as enabling somatechnologies whereby bodies are located within ethico-political relations does not address how bios and zoe may be mapped onto nonhuman animal lives. Nor does he provide a program for altering human and nonhuman animals’ ethico-political relations. Calarco envisions the jamming of Agamben’s anthropological machine as essential for this transformation (Calarco, 2007).

This article seeks to contribute to this enterprise by illustrating some ways in which the machine works. The neuroscience of inclusionary/exclusionary mechanisms parallels malleable biomedico/legal categories that include and exclude human and nonhuman animals. Categories may change through stra-tegic semantic massage (Mackenzie, 2007). For instance, nonhuman animals regarded by farmers as pests may become designated as endangered species under environmental legislation after a campaign of lobbying where both farmers and environmentalists seek to persuade public opinion to translate their categorization into regulation. As explored below, the cognitive and


affective neuroscience of dehumanization and infrahumanization, or the con-ceptualization of out-group members as less than human, demonstrates that how human and nonhuman animals are represented or framed affects how they are perceived and thus included or excluded. Strategic semantic massage acts as a framing technology for the normalization of instrumentalized con-ceptions of human and nonhuman animals within law, policy, and the mar-ketplace. In order to illustrate this, I will develop further (below) the rhetorical figuration of bestia sacer, those whose movements among zones of humans, nonhuman animals, and things render their standing within biomedico/legal taxonomies problematic.

The anthropological machine operates in human/nonhuman animal ethico-political relations in ways particularly open to strategic rhetoric insofar as many of the fundamental concepts are susceptible to contested multiple read-ings that are not always recognized or acknowledged as such. In current debates, words like rationality, animal welfare, utilitarianism, animal rights, ethics of care, and person are interpreted in many different senses (Sztybel, 2006). Opponents deploy competing conceptions and ethical implications of strategically significant central terms such as “animal welfare,” which are of limited value to nonhuman animals (Bryant, 2010; Francione, 2010). Notions of care, well-being, and welfare were interpreted within animal research and regulation, according to the goals of the researchers, which then shaped the interpretation of norms of comfort, health, and exercise imposed by reformers (Haynes, 2008).

This has implications for individual and groups of nonhuman animals. As bestia sacer, even where they are placed within ostensibly favorable categories, such as quasi-human family companion animals, they remain vulnerable to reclassification as disposable commodities, or bare life. Humans behave toward nonhuman animals in accordance with classifications based upon ascribed similarity and difference, with humans as the reference point. Nonhuman ani-mals may be classified as companion animals, pests, creatures of the wild, or as sources of food, labor, entertainment, sanctity, or scientific knowledge. These taxonomic distinctions do not map simply onto species among or within cul-tures. Within any one country, mares, for example, may be companion ani-mals, wild, killed for their meat, agricultural workhorses, racehorses, subjects of veterinary research, or (impregnated) sources of urine from which hormone replacement therapy pharmaceuticals may be derived (Mackenzie, 2009). The extent to which nonhuman animals’ lives and living conditions tend to be seen or rendered invisible influences how they are classified as deserving of differing types and degrees of protective legislation (O’Sullivan, 2007). Nonhuman animals may shift between categories, as they are pigeonholed both ethically


and legally according to their relationship with humans. In an increasing number of jurisdictions, domestic animals may be designated under the law as companion animals, or treated as members of the family insofar as those once deemed owners become legal guardians, with commensurate responsibilities (Paek, 2003). Individual nonhuman animals as well as species may move between regulatory zones indicating degrees and types of legal protection: a snake captured in the wild may become a companion animal, food, raw mate-rial for shoes or handbags, a laboratory research subject, or a disposable pest.

Where nonhuman animals are accepted as commodities, their caretakers (who may regard themselves as their owners) may be subject to anticruelty legislation and regulatory oversight of breeding practices (Fox, 2010). Regula-tions may govern conditions for raising and slaughtering nonhuman animals associated with agriculture, whereas those in the wild may be encompassed within environmental protection legislation. Yet this apparent recognition of nonhuman animal interests may in fact represent strategic semantic massage overlaying concern for human interests such as food quality and efficiencies that increase profit. For instance, official European Community support of animal welfare measures is instrumental: “[A]nimal welfare is being increas-ingly perceived as an integral element of overall food quality, having impor-tant knock-on effects on animal health and food safety” (Horgan & Gavinelli, 2006, p. 303). Suggestions that similar measures be adopted in the United States, where such protective legislation is minimal and largely cursorily enforced, have given rise to significant opposition on economic grounds (Croney & Millman, 2007). Regulation of slaughterhouse procedures reveals an ongoing commensurate preoccupation with meat quality and efficient throughput rather than reduction of suffering itself (Lavi, 2007; Burt, 2006).

Nor are the interests of nonhuman animals in other realms necessarily pri-oritized. Rather, various instances of the seamless passage from companion animal to pest demonstrate the ease with which existing zones of exception may expand to include the less powerful. Although cats and dogs may be increasingly recognized as family members and companion animals, they are simultaneously “expendable individuals that can be killed en masse at human will—or even whim” (Palmer, 2006, p. 172). A spontaneous wholesale mas-sacre of cats and dogs took place in Britain immediately after the outbreak of World War II (Kean, 2008). Despite evidence that the increasing numbers of animal companions euthanized in animal shelters in the United States impacts adversely on the quality of life of the wider society (Zanowski, 2010), animal shelter organizations report that many animal companions are designated as surplus and abandoned in times of financial crisis (Taylor, 2008). Nor are nonhuman animals outside the domestic and agricultural arenas privileged.


Conceptions of the natural and the normative are deployed strategically in debates over tensions between our duties to nonhuman animals and obligations to respect nature (Jamieson, 2008). Bekoff describes much treatment of non-human animals and their environments as “redecorating nature,” manipulat-ing other species to meet our own preferences, even when, as in “rewilding” programs, these are ostensibly for their interests (Bekoff, 2006).

Legal measures instantiate this creation and transformation of bestia sacer according to human instrumental ends. Direct manipulation of regulatory processes defines boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. One of the most notorious examples of this is the strategic definitions of the word animal in protective legislation such as the Animal Welfare Act used by Congress and the United States Department of Agriculture in order to exclude from protec-tion the nonhuman animals who are most often to be found on farms or the mice, rats, and birds in research laboratories (Carbone, 2004). The rats, mice, birds, and other nonhuman animals deliberately excluded from coverage under the Animal Welfare Act may be seen as quintessentially bestia sacer, contained without lawful protection while supporting overall governance. Similarly, abandoned companion animals, nonhuman animals in the wild exterminated to save “nature,” and the transgenic mice of Biopolis, Singapore’s nonhuman animal Guantanamo Bay, inhabit zones of included exclusion (Mackenzie, 2009). While companion animals may be framed as quasi-human, in that they are often regarded as family members, it is evident that this is conditional upon their providing emotional servicing or other instru-mental concerns. Figures from the United States demonstrate that between a tenth and a quarter of the total cat and dog population may be killed in com-panion animal shelters in a year, and that average households keep their com-panion animals for only two years (Palmer, 2006).

Are all nonhuman animals, then, doomed to bestia sacer status? Must human and nonhuman animal ethico-political relations be framed as unequal instru-mentalization? One factor here is how far theories associated with relations between humans can illuminate those between humans and nonhuman ani-mals. The first section of this article has sought to demonstrate that Agamben’s exploration of the consequences of ascribed animality within human relations involving inclusion and exclusion provides a helpful framework for consider-ing how such relations operate in the human treatment of nonhuman animals. The second explores how the social neuroscience of inclusionary/exclusionary mechanisms applies in dehumanization, infrahumanization, and rehumaniza-tion with the same purpose.


Dehumanization, Infrahumanization, and Rehumanization: The Neuroscience of Inclusionary and Exclusionary Mechanisms

Agamben’s ideas resonate with the social neuroscience of perception, classifica-tion, and prejudice. Social science investigations of intergroup relations sug-gest that how we perceive others is moderated by framing categories such as race, gender, socioeconomic place, and species. Neuroimaging provides a means of producing falsifiable hypotheses through manipulating psychologi-cal states and processes as activation in different brain regions is measured (Cacioppo, Berntson, & Nusbaum, 2008). Social neuroscience provides a means of connecting basic neurocognitive mechanisms to higher-level inter-personal, group, and societal processes (Amodio, 2008). This has proven par-ticularly valuable in studies of social context and social motives in shaping human behavior, enabling dual-process investigations. Here social cognition’s grounding in the investigation of conscious, deliberate, explicit processes is supplemented by the neuroscience of unconscious, automatic, implicit pro-cesses. Dual-process scholarship on prejudice, for instance, demonstrates that some social cognitive processes that can be measured via neuroimaging are relatively immediate, involving less deliberation and effort than others, so that they may be seen as dependent upon different rules and open to different interventions (Todorov, Harris, & Fiske, 2006). This renders possible dual-process approaches to behaviors such as social judgments categorizing others as in-group or out-group members, where immediate involuntary responses are likely to differ from subsequent, more considered judgments. This meth-odology underpins much of the research on dehumanization, infrahumaniza-tion, and rehumanization. I will now briefly describe this research, on the assumption that it may illuminate how human perceptions of nonhuman ani-mals inform the workings of Agamben’s anthropological machine.

Social psychology describes belonging as a core social motive, so that the need to ascertain the trustworthiness of others is central (Todorov & et al., 2006). The requirement to form rapid judgments of danger or disease has been identified as neurally underpinning automatic affective responses to others, such as disgust (Kelly, in press; Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005). These immediate emotional reac-tions to others enable their classification as trustworthy in-group members, or as out-group members designated as less than human, or as things. Different regions of the brain and conceptual classifications accomplish this. Humaniza-tion, or the categorization of another as possessing uniquely human qualities and agency, is associated with medial prefrontal cortex activity (Haslam, 2006). This correlates with research on bias, prejudice, and stereotyping associating inclusion/exclusion with judgments of warmth and competence (Fiske & Bor-gida, 2008). Those seen as both warm and competent are admitted to the


in-group, with significant medial prefrontal cortex activity, whereas those judged as neither are dehumanized as objects lacking minds, activating the insula and amygdala, as do objects associated with disgust (Harris et al., 2008; Harris & Fiske, 2006). Those perceived as out-group members may also be infrahuman-ized—i.e., perceived as less than human, or animal-like, in that they experience only emotions common to all animals (e.g., rage, fear) but not those seen as uniquely human (nostalgia, remorse) (Haslam, 2006). Parallels with judgments of warmth and competence may be drawn (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008; Haslam, Loughnan, & Kashima, 2008). Each type of judgment is associated with charac-teristic neural activity (Harris et al., 2008; Stanley, Phelps, & Banerji, 2008).

Yet rehumanization can take place. The formerly dehumanized can be per-ceived as agents with their own point of view (a process known within social psychology as mentalizing) and as worthy of social engagement (Amodio, 2008; Harris et al., 2008). What this means is that an initial automatic response that dehumanizes another may be changed so that the other is reframed as human. This recategorization of in-group/out-group membership takes place in two ways. For example, stereotyping is distinct from the kind of intergroup evaluation involved in dehumanization. While the conscious rejec-tion of a stereotype achieved through top-down inhibition of unwanted thoughts involves the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, rehumanization involves activation of the medial prefrontal cortex achieved through reconceptualiza-tion of the dehumanized. Accordingly, while redressing stereotyping may be achieved through pairing stereotypes with inconsistent verbal information, in strategies for remedying dehumanizing, implicit evaluations should focus upon the use of affectively laden, or emotionally significant, imagery to decou-ple the automatic responses experienced as immediate, gut-level reactions from images of stigmatized group members (Amodio, 2008). More simply, as the stereotyping is located in the language parts of the prefrontal cortex, words are more persuasive in altering conscious views. Since the amygdala and asso-ciated approach/avoidance governing circuitry are not associated with lan-guage, emotional images and experiences are likely to alter implicit evaluations (Amodio & Devine, 2006), leading to rehumanization. Another successful strategy to alter biased implicit evaluations has been to initiate intergroup contact in anxiety-reducing situations and to alter the context in which per-ception of out-group members takes place. This may be accomplished by reframing, where consideration of the point of view of the dehumanized is stimulated. This suggests that those seeking to influence inclusionary/exclu-sionary behaviors should adopt a multipronged approach, addressing each ele-ment of judgments according to the way in which they function.


Much of the research sketched out above has as its focus racism and how to eradicate it. Before turning to how this might be applied to human and non-human animal ethico-political relations, I will explore briefly the social psy-chology and social cognitive and affective neuroscience of how humans perceive nonhuman animals.

Social Neuroscience of Humans’ Perception of Nonhuman Animals

Traditional research into humans’ attitudes toward nonhuman animals has treated them in an essentialist fashion, or as the nonhuman animal rather than as nonhuman animals. Only recently have investigations assessed perceptions according to types of nonhuman animals, such as companion animals, pests, or profit-making (Taylor & Signal, 2009) and as modified by characteristics of the humans responding, such as low self-esteem (Beatson & Halloran, 2007). Perceived similarities between nonhuman animals and humans may promote anthropomorphism or acceptance (Harrison & Hall, 2010). Anthropomor-phism, where nonhuman animals are construed in human terms, is associated with affection and sympathy as opposed to perceptions determined by instru-mental self-interest or utility (Serpell, 2003). Serpell considers that nonhu-man animals with strong positive or negative utility—e.g., mice in laboratories or cockroaches—seldom provoke affection, presumably because their catego-rization in terms of utility leads to their being harmed (Serpell, 2004). Forty varied species’ biobehavioral similarities with humans according to physical (size, weight, lifespan) and behavioral (reproductive strategy, parental invest-ment, social organization) measures revealed a clear correlation between pref-erence and perceived similarity (Batt, 2009). However, nonhuman animals’ perceived similarities with humans evoke favorable responses only when they are humanlike: similarities revealing humans as like nonhuman animals (e.g., creatureliness and mortality) precipitate negative responses (Beatson, Lough-nan, & Halloran, 2009).

Contradictions abound. As companion animals provide social support, with ensuing health benefits (Wells, 2009), they may also be viewed in utili-tarian terms. Dogs in South Korea are both companion animals and food: existing legislation banning their consumption is not supported as the practice of eating them is associated with national identity (Podberscek, 2009). While cultural factors such as scientific evidence affect humans’ beliefs about the moral standing of nonhuman animals (Knight, Vrij, Bard, & Brandon, 2009; Serpell, 2004, 2009), most manage to compartmentalize or engage in strategic semantic massage to avoid confronting fundamental conflicts of interest


underlying human/nonhuman animal ethico-political relations (Mackenzie, 2009). These techniques constitute Agamben’s anthropological machine. Thus human/human and human/nonhuman animals’ ethico-political relations demonstrate parallels with intergroup processes, dehumanization, infrahu-manization, and rehumanization as described above.

Conclusion: Best Strategies for Bestia Sacer

How then might social neuroscience assist human/nonhuman animals’ ethico-political relations by helping to jam Agamben’s anthropological machine? Until research is reported evidencing how humans’ brain regions activate in relation to different nonhuman individuals and species, how context influ-ences the way these individuals and species are perceived, and how the links between brain activation and perception correspond, much of this inquiry remains speculative. Most significantly, current social neuroscience provides evidence that medico-legal taxonomic categories are fluid, alterable, and driven by perceptual judgments open to influence. The dehumanized become rehu-manized when their point of view is acknowledged (Harris et al., 2008). Sec-ondly, categorization is not congruent with species. Humans may classify other humans as in-group humans, infrahumanized animals (artists), infrahu-manized objects (business people) (Loughnan & Haslam, 2007) or dehuman-ized (the homeless or addicts—in Agamben’s terms, bare life). Some humans see some nonhuman animals as in-group members and other humans as out-group members or things.

Those who regard animal companions as family members, together with those who place nonhuman animals within the moral circle of concern, are likely to evidence activity in the medial prefrontal cortex rather than the amygdala and threat-activation network. Given that rehumanization involves mentalizing, or accepting that the dehumanized have points of view, research into what means foster similar recategorization for nonhuman animals should prove worthwhile. Since categorizations depend upon dual-process mecha-nisms, as outlined above (Amodio, 2008), cognitive and affective neurosci-ence affords a unique means for ascertaining how immediate, involuntary judgments relate to subsequent considered categorizations. If the latter are an ex post facto rationalization of the former (Haidt, 2001), as we seek to ratio-nalize our own selfish motivations (Serpell, 2009), then investigation into how these initial unconsidered judgments of nonhuman animals function and how they may be affected holds much promise.

Insofar as links between affect or emotions and initial involuntary categori-zations have been noted, these are often associated with moral judgments of


those categorized, such as of the dehumanized as unworthy of assistance. This suggests that campaigns seeking to influence immediate reactions should rely upon emotional or affective stimuli, in contrast to ones seeking to influence subsequent judgments, which appear to be influenced more by cognitive fac-tors (Harris et al., 2008). While little cognitive and affective social neurosci-ence research has addressed brain activation and perceptions of nonhuman animals, animal activists have been found to be more sensitive to disgust than those who regard nonhuman animals more instrumentally, such as nonactiv-ists, hunters, and supporters of animal research (Herzog & Golden, 2009). This ties in with Kelly’s portrayal of the neuroscience of disgust as representing a mechanism evolutionarily linked to health concerns (such as disgust at the inedible or unsafe), which has been captured by cognitive and affective net-works linked to moral judgments (Kelly, in press). Herzog and Golden suggest that animal activists may be stimulated by feelings of disgust to categorize nonhuman animals as beings giving rise to significant moral regard and con-cern. Thus mechanisms fostering inclusion may differ where disgust and spe-cies are concerned. The dehumanized arouse disgust but not moral regard (Aaron, 2008; Harris et al., 2008). Campaign strategies linking compassion and moral disgust over instrumentalization of nonhuman animals may prove fruitful, especially as regards the degradation of what Bernard Rollins has called “moral stress” into the reductionism of “compassion fatigue” (Macken-zie, 2009).

Further consideration of how judgments of humans rating warmth and competence translate into action and assistance for nonhuman animals may also prove fruitful for activist strategies. Humans seen as warm and competent stimulate pride and support. High warmth and low competence stimulate pity and neglect. Those with low warmth and high competence stimulate envy and scapegoating in difficult times. Those with low warmth and competence evoke disgust and aggression (Harris et al., 2008). Placing these tendencies together with research showing that humans favor nonhuman animals seen as similar, but not creaturely, suggests that how nonhuman animals are portrayed in activist campaigns will significantly determine how the public perceives them. Who we judge as similar to us may be influenced less by aesthetic appeal and how closely a nonhuman species is related to humanity than bio-behavioral factors as outlined above and preferences for certain species. Indeed, Batt cites a study where humans’ genetic similarity with bonobos was undermined by the subjects’ viewing a film showing their singular mating behavior (Beatson et al., 2007), speculating that ratings would have differed had they viewed positive social behaviors like altruism or cooperation (Batt, 2009). Portrayals of nonhuman animals in campaign images might thus suggest warmth and


competence in order to stimulate willing assistance, as incompetence or help-lessness might foster neglect, and cold competence (as in many nonmammals) a degree of hostility together with associations with ill-health and disgust. This hypothesis is borne out to an extent by research into species preferences where those seen as lacking in individuality (like spiders) or threats to health (like rats) are rated very poorly (Batt, 2009; Knight, 2007).

This scenario is complicated not only by difficulties and uncertainties asso-ciated with translating research associated with inclusionary/exclusionary per-ceptions of humans to a nonhuman animal context, but also with the conflation of nonhuman animals with nature. Clarity over what aims animal activist strategies are seeking to attain is essential. Ending the exclusion of bestia sacer through the recognition of individual and groups of nonhuman animals deserving respect on their own terms is a self-evident objective. While anthro-pomorphism appears to operate via attribution of uniquely human qualities to animals (Harrison et al., 2010; Haslam et al., 2008), its emphasis on similari-ties, even where these are overestimated, tends to increase care and concern for species (Batt, 2009; Bryant, 2007). Yet strategies based on anthropomorphism represent a type of species colonialism that perpetuates inclusionary/exclu-sionary relations between species. Emphases on similarities with humans should be balanced by attention being drawn to unique qualities characteriz-ing specific nonhuman animals as inherently deserving of respect, as opposed to seeking simply to arouse pity for the endangered. Respect is an emotion plausibly evoked by another’s warmth and competence. Negative attitudes toward dissimilar or initially unsympathetic species appear to be declining as endangered species legislation portrays them as inherently valuable in their own right (Knight, 2007). Fostering campaigns emphasizing nonthreatening similarities and interdependence between human and nonhuman species seems advisable (Beatson et al., 2007), particularly to ameliorate Bekoff ’s con-cerns over conservation strategies as redecorating nature.

Bestia sacer is a figuration, one response to Calarco’s call for the jamming of Agamben’s anthropological machine. This article suggests how the machine operates in order that it may cease damaging human/nonhuman animal ethico-political relations. Nonetheless, this raises the question of whether, and how far, mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion should be seen as inevitably and inappropriately destructive. Esposito argues that mechanisms of immunity and auto-immunity are embedded in Western thought and hence biopolitical strategies (Esposito, 2008). In other words, inevitably not only outsiders must be excluded, but some insiders, too. He contrasts this politics of mastery and negation of life with the prospect of an affirmative politics of life, where it is assumed that bios cannot be separated from zoe. In this affirmative politics of


life, as every life counts as bios, harming one life form harms all lives, so all zoe is already bios—i.e., has political significance. Yet how to achieve this without inclusionary/exclusionary mechanisms promoting immunity is not straight-forward. As Wolfe asks, “Should anthrax or Ebola virus enjoy the same Deleu-zian right to creative flourishing as these other life forms [great apes, mice, dogs, carp], even if it means the end of Homo sapiens?” (Wolfe, 2010, p. 23).

Calarco’s call to jam Agamben’s anthropological machine raises many pro-found issues in relation to human/nonhuman animal ethico-political rela-tions, as does the logistics of instantiating Esposito’s affirmative biopolitics. While the cognitive and affective social neuroscience of human judgments of nonhuman animals is still emerging, it has the potential to inform activists’ inclusionary campaigns and strategies. Understanding how the anthropologi-cal machine works should help to jam it and end the exclusion of bestia sacer.

Dedication

This article is dedicated to my daughter, Tahu Mackenzie of Te Korowai o Mihiwaka, the Orokonui Eco-Sanctuary, Orokonui, Dunedin, New Zealand, http://www.orokonui.org.nz, in gratitude for her continuing inspiration.

References

Aaron, S. (2008). Refusal. London: Bray.Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-

sity Press.—— (2004). The open: Man and animal. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.—— (2006). The state of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Agamben, G., & Murray, S. (2008). No to biopolitical tattooing. Communication and Critical/

Cultural Studies, 5(2), 211.Amodio, D. (2008). The social neuroscience of intergroup relations. European Review of Social

Psychology, 19(1), 1-54.Amodio, D., & Devine, P. (2006). Stereotyping and evaluation in implicit race bias: Evidence

for independent constructs and unique effects on behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 652-661.

Batt, S. (2009). Human attitudes towards animals in relation to species similarity to humans: A multivariate approach. Bioscience Horizons, 2(2), 180-190.

Beatson, R., & Halloran, M. (2007). Humans rule! The effects of creatureliness reminders, mor-tality salience and self-esteem on attitudes towards animals. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46(3), 619-632.

Beatson, R., Loughnan, S., & Halloran, M. (2009). Attitudes towards animals: The effect of priming thoughts of human-animal similarities and mortality on the evaluation of companion animals. Society & Animals 17(1), 72-89.

Bekoff, M. (2006). Animal passions and beastly virtues: Reflections on redecorating nature. Philadel-phia: Temple University Press.


Bryant, T. (2007). Similarity or difference as a basis for justice: Must animals be like humans to be legally protected from humans? Law and Contemporary Problems, 70, 207-254.

—— (2010). Denying animals childhoods: Its implications for animal protection law reform. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 6(1), 56-74.

Burt, J. (2006). Conflicts around slaughter in modernity. In Animal Studies Group (Eds.), Kill-ing animals (pp. 120-144). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Cacioppo, J., Berntson, G., & Nusbaum, H. (2008). Neuroimaging as a new tool in the toolbox of psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), 62-67.

Cagnacci, F., & Urbano, F. (2008). Managing wildlife: A spatial information system for GPS collars data. Environmental Modelling and Software, 23(7), 957-969.

Calarco, M. (2007). Jamming the anthropological machine. In M. Calarco & S. DeCaroli (Eds.), Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and life (pp. 163-179). Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-sity Press.

Carbone, L. (2004). What animals want: Expertise and advocacy in laboratory animal welfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cottrell, C., & Neuberg, S. (2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A socio-functional threat-based approach to prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(5), 770-789.

Croney, C., & Millman, S. (2007). The ethical and behavioural bases for farm animal welfare legislation. Journal of Animal Science, 85(2), 556-565.

Cuddy, A., Fiske, S., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40(1), 61-149.

Esposito, R. (2008). Bios: Biopolitics and philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fiske, S., & Borgida, E. (2008). Providing expert knowledge in an adversarial context: Social cognitive science in employment discrimination cases. Annual Review of Law & Social Science, 4, 123-148.

Fox, M. (2010). Taking dogs seriously? Law, Culture and the Humanities, 6(6), 37-55.Francione, G. L. (2010). Animal welfare and the moral value of nonhuman animals. Law, Cul-

ture and the Humanities, 6(6), 24-36.Gearheard, S., Aipellee, G., & O’Keefe, K. The Igliniit project: Combining Inuit knowledge

with geomatics engineering to develop a new observation tool for hunters. In I. Krupnik, C. Aporta, S. Gearheard, G. J. Ladler, & L. K. Holm (Eds.), SIKU: Knowing our ice: Docu-menting Inuit sea ice knowledge (pp. 181-202). Amsterdam: Springer.

Greenberg, T. (2009, January 9). So many animals—not enough people [Television broadcast]. MSNBC.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgement. Psychological Review, 316(4), 998-1002.

Harris, L., & Fiske, S. (2008). Social neuroscience evidence for dehumanised perception. Euro-pean Review of Social Psychology, 20(1), 192-231.

Harrison, M. A., & Hall, A. E. (2010). Anthropomorphism, empathy and perceived communi-cative ability vary with phylogenetic relatedness to humans. Journal of Social Evolution & Cultural Psychology, 4(1), 34-48.

Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanisation: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252-264.

Haslam, N., Loughnan, S., & Kashima, Y. (2008). Attributing and denying humanness to oth-ers. European Review of Social Psychology, 19(1), 55-85.

Haynes, R. (2008). Animal welfare: Competing conceptions and their ethical implications. New York: Springer.


Herzog, H., & Golden, L. (2009). Moral emotions and social activism: The case of animal rights. Journal of Social Issues, 65(3), 495-498.

Horgan, R., & Gavinelli, A. (2006). The expanding role of animal welfare within EU legislation and beyond. Livestock Science, 103(3), 303-307.

Jamieson, D. (2008). The rights of animals and the demands of nature. Environmental Values, 17(2), 181-199.

Kean, H. (2008, December 5). Re-thinking the role of animals in human/animal histories: The challenge of the British cat and dog massacre. Paper presented at the Minding Animals Pre-Conference Lecture Series, London, UK.

Kelly, D. (in press). The philosophy and psychology of disgust. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Knight, A. (2008). Bats, snakes and spiders, oh my! How aesthetic and negativistic attitudes and

other constructs predict support for species protection. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28(1), 94-109.

Knight, S., Vrij, A., Bard, K., & Brandon, D. (2009). Science versus human welfare? Under-standing attitudes towards animal use. Journal of Social Issues, 65(3), 463-483.

Lavi, S. (2007). Animal laws and the politics of life: Slaughterhouse regulation in Germany, 1870-1917. Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8(1), 221-240.

Loughnan, S., & Haslam, N. (2007). Animals and androids: Implicit associations between social categories and nonhumans. Psychological Science, 18(2), 116-129.

Mackenzie, R. (2007). Regulating reprogenetics: Strategic sacralisation and semantic massage. Health Care Analysis, 16(4), 305-319.

—— (2008). Somatechnics of medico-legal taxonomies: Elective amputation and transableism. Medical Law Review, 16(4), 390-412.

—— (2009). Bestia sacer and Agamben’s anthropological machine: Biomedical/legal taxono-mies as somatechnologies of human and nonhuman animals’ ethico-political relations. In M. Freeman (Ed.), Law and anthropology: Current legal problems (pp. 484-523). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

O’Sullivan, S. (2007). Animal visibility and equality in liberal democratic states: A study into ani-mal ethics and the nature of bias in animal protection legislation. Unpublished doctoral disserta-tion, University of Sydney.

Paek, E. (2003). Fido seeks full membership of the family: Dismantling the property classifica-tion of companion animals by statute. University of Hawaii Law Review, 25(4), 481-524.

Palmer, C. (2006). Killing animals in animal shelters. In Animal Studies Group (Ed.), Killing animals (pp. 171-187). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Podberscek, A. (2009). Good to pet and eat: The keeping and consuming of dogs and cats in South Korea. Journal of Social Issues, 65(3), 615-632.

Serpell, J. (2003). Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphic selection: Beyond the cute response. Society & Animals, 11(1), 83-100.

——. (2004). Factors influencing human attitudes to animals and their welfare. Animal Welfare, 13(S1), S145-S151.

——. (2009). Having our dogs and eating them too: Why animals are a social issue. Journal of Social Issues, 65(3), 633-644.

Stanley, D., Phelps, E., & Banaji, M. (2008). The neural basis of implicit attitudes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), 164-170.

Sztybel, D. (2006). The rights of animal persons. Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Jour-nal, 4, 1-37.

Taylor, J. (2008, May 23). Abandoned—are Britain’s pets the latest victims of the credit crunch? The Independent, p. 31.

Taylor, N., & Signal, T. (2009). Pet, pest, profit: Isolating differences in attitudes towards the treatment of animals. Anthrozoös, 22, 129-135.


Todorov, A., Harris, L., & Fiske, S. (2006). Toward socially inspired neuroscience. Brain Research, 1079(1), 76-85.

Wells, D. (2009). The effects of animals on human health and well-being. Journal of Social Issues, 65(3), 523-543.

Wolfe, C. (2010). Before the law: Animals in a biopolitical context. Law, Culture & the Human-ities, 6(1), 8-23.

Zanowski, G. (2010). The true costs of euthanasia in animal shelters. International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry, 3(2), 291-319.

How the Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion and the ... · Bestia sacer is a mirrored other of homo...

Documents

Transcript of How the Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion and the ... · Bestia sacer is a mirrored other of homo...