Animal Liberation: A Political Perspective

Abstract

Those aiming at the liberation of nonhuman animals must confront the combined effects of the ingrained ideology of human superiority and of capitalism as mode of production based on global commodification. In the face of this scenario, Cavalieri claims, two approaches—the Frankfurtians’ Critical theory, with its challenge to the reifying power of instrumental reason, and Pierre Bourdieu’s Reflexive sociology, with its deconstruction of the symbolic violence of the dominant—might offer some guidance. For, through their common stress on the essential role of theory as an instrument able both to interpret reality and to modify it, they can provide a unified perspective whose theoretical insights and suggestions for praxis may be profitably adapted to the context of the animal question.