Spesiesisme, Antroposentrisme, en die Gebruik van die Holocaust-Metafoor in Dierebevrydingsdiskoers: 'n Reg-en-Letterkunde-Perspektief / Speciesism, Anthropocentrism, and the Use of the Holocaust Metaphor in Animal Liberation Discourse: A Law and Literature Perspective

Abstract

In this article I illustrate the challenges accompanying the utilisation of law in the service of animal liberation and simultaneously investigate the capacity of literature as a counterweight. I illustrate that the subject centred model of the law and specifically the construct of (animal) rights, which currently constitutes the most progressive use of the law for the advancement of animals’ interests, is grounded in an anthropocentric metaphysics of subjectivity that solidifies the human as patriarchal centre of beings. I subsequently identify the law and discourse of (animal) rights as sites of anthropocentric oppression and call for a critical approach that identifies anthropocentrism as its target. I draw on the work of Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to illustrate how the polyphonic novel can destabilise the (authority of the) law and accommodate the voice(lessness) of the animal in a way that exposes and circumvents the fundamental anthropocentric limitations of the law. I furthermore analyse the way in which JM Coetzee utilises the Holocaust metaphor in his novella The Lives of Animals and argue that he not only foregrounds the critical importance of anthropocentrism for animal ethics, but also allows us to understand and approach intersectionality in a way that transcends the boundaries of inter-human injustices because he emphasizes that there are important links between the violence directed at both animals and humans.

Keywords

• Animal ethics
• animal liberation discourse
• anthropocentrism
• Holocaust metaphor
• JM Coetzee
• law and literature