Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation
By: Kim Socha
Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2012, XIV, 258 pp.
Pb: 978-90-420-3423-5
€ 54 / US$ 81

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ABOUT THE BOOK

This interdisciplinary study fuses analysis of feminist literature and manifestos, radical political theory, critical vanguard studies, women’s performance art, and popular culture to argue for the animal liberation movement as successor to the liberationist visions of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes, most especially the Surrealists. These vanguard groups are judiciously critiqued for their refusal to confront their own misogyny, a quandary that continues to plague animal activists, thereby disallowing for cohesion and full recognition of women’s value within a culturally marginalized cause.

This volume is of interest to anyone who is concerned about the continued—indeed, escalating—violence against nonhumans. More broadly, it will interest those seeking new pathways to challenge the dominant power constructions through which oppression of humans, nonhumans, and the environment thrives. Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde ultimately poses the animal liberation movement as having serious political and cultural implications for radical social change, destruction of hierarchy and for a world without shackles and cages, much as the Surrealists envisioned.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword – Helena Pedersen and Vasile Stanescu: Series Editor’s Introduction: What is “Critical” about Animal Studies? From the Animal “Question” to the Animal “Condition”

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rooting for the Avant-Garde

I. Avant-Garde Women Writers and Destruction in the Flesh

II. Staring Back in the Flesh: Avant-Garde Performance as an ALM Paradigm

III. Convulsive Beauty, Infinite Spheres and Irrational Reasons: Reverie on a New Consciousness

Conclusion: Love and Laughter Now: Plucking at Stems or Uprooting Oppression?

Works Cited

Index

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Kim Socha is an animal activist and sits on the board of the Animal Rights Coalition in Minneapolis, MN. Holding a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism, she works as a composition and literature instructor with publications in the areas of surrealism, Latino literature and pedagogy.

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Gene Baur
Author and Co-Founder of Farm Sanctuary

Book Signing and Talk

April 13, 2011

7 to 8pm

Moffett Hall 2125

SUNY Cortland, New York

Gene Baur is co‑founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, America’s leading farm animal protection organization. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from California State University, Northridge and a master’s degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University. He has conducted hundreds of visits to farms, stockyards, and slaughterhouses to document conditions. His pictures and videotape, exposing factory farming cru…elty, have been aired nationally and internationally, educating millions. Gene has testified in court and before local, state and federal legislative bodies, and has initiated groundbreaking legal enforcement and legislative action to prevent farm animal abuse. He played an important role in passing the first U.S. laws to prohibit cruel farming methods – including the Florida ban on gestation crates, the Arizona ban on veal and gestation crates, the California ban on veal and gestation crates and battery cages, and the California ban on foie gras. His efforts have been covered by leading news organizations, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Public Radio, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. His book, entitled Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food, was published by Touchstone in March, 2008 and has appeared on the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe best seller lists.

More about Gene at: http://www.genebaur.org/

Sponsored by:
Anthony Nocella’s Deviant Behavior Course and Cortland Animal Allies

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Here is a talk of Amie Breeze Harper presenting her new book Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society at AK Press Release. This talk concerns how her new book discusses racialization and white privilege in veganism and the animal rights movement. Check it out!

at AK Press Release.

Sistah Vegan AK Press Oakland, CA April 15 Part 1 from Sistah Vegan on Vimeo.

Sistah Vegan AK Press Oakland, CA April 15 2010 Part II from Sistah Vegan on Vimeo.

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Call for Presentations at SSSP 2010:

I would like to invite papers/presentations for the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) www.sssp1.org for the panel “Animals and the Environment: Inequalities and Social Justice Theory” that I am the session organizer of. The theme of the SSSP Conference this year is “Social Justice Work.” It is a huge conference in the field of Sociology, but has scholars from many others fields of study from around the world. The conference typically has about 1,000 people who also attend in the same city at the same time the American Sociology Association (ASA) http://www.asanet.org/ Conference. The Society for the Study of Social Problems will be held August 13-15 2010 at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel, Atlanta, GA. I hope you are interested. The deadline is this Monday Feb 15, 2010. I would need your title, description, and biography. You do of course have to pay for registration, lodging, and travel.

I hope you are interested please let me know asap!!!

anthony.nocella[@]cortland.edu or nocellaj[@]lemoyne.edu

Anthony J. Nocella, II
Sociology and Criminology, SUNY Cortland
Sociology and Criminology, Le Moyne College
www.anthonynocella.org
www.anthonynocella.wordpress.org

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