Locating Feminist Animal Studies

Feminism was engaged politically, theoretically and practically, largely with issues of human rather than human and non-human animal relations from the early second wave of feminist activism in the 1970s with the exception of visionaries for example, Adams (1976). Ecofeminist scholarship in particular (Adams, 1990/2000; Cudworth, 2005; Donovan, 2006; Kheel, 2008) has been central to the development of feminist animal studies (FAS). While Greta Gaard (2012) was right to observe that the intersectional observations of ecofeminist scholarship were ignored by much work in human-animal studies for twenty-five years, there is now increasing discussion of ‘entanglements’ of oppression theoretically (Cudworth, 2011) and the development of feminist multi-species methodologies (Birke, 2014; Gillespie, 2019). However, just as feminist scholarship has generated a diversity of theoretical framings, methodological innovations, and perspectives on various subjects, there has not been a singular feminist position on ‘the animal question’. Disputes have revolved around the assumptions underpinning women’s caring labour, questions of animal use and animal liberation and the use of animals as food, clothing and companions (see Adams, 1993; Diamond, 2008; Donovan, 2006; Haraway, 2008; Plumwood, 2004), and on the relationship between FAS, posthumanist and new materialist approaches (Weisberg, 2009; Cudworth, 2011). Feminist approaches have been critiqued for underplaying other elements such as the importance of race and culture in structuring species-based oppression (Deckha, 2012); while vegan scholars of colour have argued for the centrality of race in conceptualising veganism and our relationship to other animals (Harper, 2010; Ko & Ko, 2017). This introduction, therefore, locates FAS historically and theoretically, mapping the key areas of debate within the field and the ways these have resolved (or not) and shifted over time. The introduction also locates distinctly feminist approaches to animal studies in relation to other kinds of scholarship ‘on animals’, and (re)asserts the need for specifically feminist engagements (Cudworth, 2016; Fraser and Taylor, 2018; Gruen, 2015). It will argue that these approaches are needed to challenge human centrism and uncritical humanism in the feminist mainstream, providing depth and richness to critical animal scholarship more broadly. The introduction ends by introducing the structure of the book and the contributions to this collection, suggesting that these are bound by an appreciation of the precarious nature of animal lives, embodied materialism, and a commitment to intersectional analysis. These contributions explore a range of issues through different kinds of gender lenses, demonstrating the eclecticism, dynamism, and significance of the field.