A radical exploration of animal rights and the eating of animals in the form of a story and two lectures or debates. A look at several sides of the question of the nature of being of animals, of equivalency between animals and humans. Extreme positions from animals are essentially objects to such a rejection of animals as food that would lead to the extinction of cows, pigs, etc. as we know them.
There are also three or four short essay responses to Coetzee's work. One dryly academic, one in the form of another story and the last one which is the personal reflections of someone who has spent a great deal of time studying animals, in particular baboons(Barbara Smuts). Her reflections are very interesting. She explores the relationships that animals have formed with her in her long study of a particular troop of baboons. She talks about personhood as a willingness to form a singular relationship with another being, animal or human, based on mutual respect and an effort to understand. She convincingly argues that baboons (and dogs) possess personhood as that kind of relationship exist between humans and nonhumans. Interestingly, she argues that when animals are seen solely as something "other", it is not the animal that loses personhood but the human exhibiting this attitude. It is an interesting concept, one that challenges the "species centrism" of us humans It defines human as a willingness to engage and form relationships with the world around us (which would clearly place current social trends especially in the West as non- person and inhuman or unhuman...)
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