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Nonhuman animals/nature have traditionally been seen as the binary opposites of humanity/society. Increasingly, however, nonhuman animals are emerging as a constituency that state power seeks to include as partial members of society to justify various operations of power. This dissertation examines the motivations for, and outcomes of, the alliances forming between the animal rights (AR) movement and state power. Specifically, it explores how interspecies biopolitics, and practices of animalization/humanization that they engender, creates an internationalized form of biopolitical citizenship centered on practices of nonhuman animal exploitation and/or protection.
To explore this phenomenon, I engage in an interpretive analysis of three representative cases. The first explores “carceral veganism” in the USA to demonstrate how the reliance of AR activists on state enforcement of animal welfare laws has linked AR together with immigration enforcement efforts in the space of the slaughterhouse. Secondly, turning to Israel/Palestine, I explore how AR concerns blend with settler colonial violence through the ongoing veganization of the Israel Defense Forces and its international promotion as a “moral army.” Finally, the third case turns to the militarized conservation efforts utilized to protect endangered species in Tanzania to explores a central paradox, namely how the rhetoric that justifies “hunting” poachers in Tanzania due to their violent actions against nonhuman animals is made to comfortably coexist with the promotion of these lands as an ecotourist destination for wealthy safari hunters.
Taken as a whole, these cases demonstrate how the alliance between state power and the AR movement acts to expand and contract access to proper citizenship and, in the process, rewrite the norms of what constitutes belonging to national communities, global communities, or humanity itself using interspecies biopolitical strategies. It is my contention that attentiveness to the interspecies nature of these practices, as well as the practice of legitimation exchange between the AR movement and state power upholding them, demonstrates how nonhuman animals, their protection, and their killing are increasingly utilized by to create, justify, and uphold a wider matrix of interspecies violence and control.