Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination

Nathan Poirier is a professional tutor at Lansing Community College, has a graduate specialization in women’s and gender studies, master’s degrees in anthrozoology and mathematics, and is co-editor of Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation. Sarah Tomasello received her B.A. in Anthropology and Religious Studies and an M.S. in Anthrozoology from Canisius College. She has published in Green Theory and Praxis, and book chapters in Gender and Sexuality in Critical Animal Studies and Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies. Amber E. George, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Galen College. Dr. George is a board member for Critical Animal Studies and editor of Journal for Critical Animal Studies. Dr. George has co-edited numerous books on critical animal studies.

Acknowledgments – Charlotte Anne: Foreword – Nathan Poirier/Sarah Tomasello/Amber E. George: Introduction: Imagining with Abandon – Cameron Whitley: Connecting Transgender Studies and Critical Animal Studies – Agnese Martini/Francesca Corradini/Matteo Porazzi: Anthropogenic Monsters: A CAS and Liberating Perspective on the Contemporary Production of Human and Nonhuman Monsters – Nandita Bajaj/Kirsten Stade: Animal Liberation through Procreative Justice –John Tallent: Antinatalism, Veganism, and the Imperative of a Total Liberationist Perspective – Elisabeth Dimitras: Procreation and Aviation: The Elephants in the Vegan Room – Ezgi Karaoğlu: Infrastructural Approach to Urban Street Animals of Istanbul: Contestation, Violence, Affectivity, and Spatial Visibility in Metropolis – Zane McNeill/Nathan Poirier: Ida B. Wells’ Historical and Contemporary Legacy, and Relevance to Critical Animal Studies – Nathan Poirier/Simon Springer: Listening to and Learning with African Anarchism, Black Anarchism, and Anarcho-Blackness – Will Boisseau: Vegan Mutual Aid: Anarchist Solidarity in Times of Crisis – Nathan Poirier: Create Meat Though the World May Perish: A Vegan Critique of In Vitro Meat and Clean Milk – Jeremy Bendik-Keymer: The Others Called ‘Humans’ Amidst the Many: Anthroponomy and the Planetary Problem –Laura Schleifer: Post-Scarcity Veganarchism – Seven Mattes: Afterword – Notes on Contributors –Index.

A wake-up call for critical animal studies that invites us to abandon respectability politics. These imaginative essays link liberatory thought and social justice action in ways that will astound, inspire, and anger you in turn. Best read with a mind open to anarchism.

Margaret Robinson (Mi’kmaq)
Dalhousie University, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Reconciliation, Gender, and Identity

It is rare, truly, that one finds a book that delivers on its radical and iconoclastic promise. This book does precisely that. Delinking critical animal studies from a presumed narrowness, Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination is deeply intersectional, deeply committed, and deeply cutting edge—in a rigorous, robust, and genuine way. This collection goes there; it is not afraid, at all, to be Black, trans, feminist, and anarchistic in ways that we strongly need. In short, read this. Now.

Marquis Bey
Author of Black Trans Feminism

I am always seeking out unruly ideas and undisciplined perspectives that will unsettle the ways that we have been conditioned to think about the world we live in, and that invite us to imagine and act to realize the worlds we might co-create. This powerful collection of writings on the future of Critical Animal Studies is an exemplar of such a vision and has challenged me to expand, deepen, and sharpen my thinking about how we can and must transform our freedom dreams into lived experience.

David Naguib Pellow
University of California Santa Barbara, author of Total Liberation and What is Critical Environmental Justice?