The Animal Question in Contemporary Radical Politics and Thought

First, I’d like to thank Jodi and Matt for their kind invitation to join Long Sunday as a contributor.   For those readers who do not know me, my name is Matt Calarco and I teach philosophy at Sweet Briar College and contribute on occasion over at I cite.  I have been meaning to post something here at Long Sunday for a couple of months, but have (much to my shame) failed to follow through.  I could offer the usual excuse of being too busy (which would not be false), but a more honest reason could be given.
 
The more honest reason is that I am never quite certain of how to insinuate myself in the debates that go on at Long Sunday, I cite, The Weblog, and other similar blogs I frequent.  The uncertainty stems from my predisposition to approach contemporary radical politics, activism, and theory from a deeply non-anthropocentric perspective—a perspective that is, I take it, not widely shared by most readers of and contributors to these blogs.  While some contributors (primarily Deleuzeans, with whom I am very close for obvious reasons) offer occasional nods to developments in transhumanist thought and radical environmentalism and their promise for contemporary political struggles (and I loudly applaud such posts, if only to myself in my living room), I almost never see any parallel discussion of the role that radical animal politics/theory/studies might or should play in these same struggles.  Similarly, the theorists who are most admired at these sites are rarely, if ever, taken to task for their brazen and dogmatically metaphysical anthropocentrism.

But, the comments on Jodi’s recent post on “A Fox” (which was in turn inspired by a post over at Infinite Thought), combined with a recent increase in attention given to animal studies by leading theorists (for example, Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben) and various Marxists, made me wonder whether this state of affairs might slowly be changing.  Along these lines, I found the following comment by Anthony Paul Smith on Jodi’s “A Fox” post at I cite to be particularly interesting:

“In a less apocalyptic tone I could say that any political revolution will have to deal with the animal problem.  Some more rationally inclined heads than mine (i.e. Bill Martin, member of the RCPUSA) have said as much within the party system of Communism.”

 Anthony is correct that Martin has made this point, and he does so in a very explicit manner in his discussion with Bob Avakian in Marxism and the Call of the Future.  There, Martin makes the suggestion that carnivorism is central to the present economic and political system in which we find ourselves and that a transformation of our relations with animals is an ethically and politically pressing matter in its own right.

So, the question that I’d like to throw out there is this:  Can we say, building off of Anthony Paul Smith’s statement, that the animal problem is unavoidable for radical politics today?  And if so, in what way?  And if it is the case that the animal issue has become “massively unavoidable” (as Derrida phrases it in Specters of Marx) for radical politics, how is it possible that many of the contemporary theorists and activists discussed here and at related sites are so expert and accomplished in avoiding it?

In brief, then, what role should the animal question and the critique of anthropocentrism play in contemporary politics and thought?

I hope folks will forgive me for posing such a broad and open-ended question, but I’d prefer to allow people to take it up in whatever way they see fit.