Where does nonhuman animal labor fit within the larger social reassessment of labor? The papers on this panel offer much needed insight into this timely question. In “Love and Entanglement” the author describes how appeals to entanglement deflect attention from the critical issue of domestication and the myriad harms it inherently—if variably—demands. In “Dependence and Defense,” the author explores how American Jewish immigrants' dependence upon and defense of animals was born of the rough and tumble of immigrant religious life and Jewish acculturation in modernity. “Joy is an Ethical Obligation” explores the religious, emotional, and physical labor bound up in being a veterinarian, showing that if we continue to neglect these dimensions, we risk the lives of animals and veterinarians alike.”
This paper seeks to deepen and expand understandings of entanglements between religion, animals, and modernity focusing on immigrant Jews in the United States in the early twentieth century. Explore the role played by horses in immigrant Jews’ everyday lives, the animal welfare activism of a cadre of European-born Reform rabbis, and photographs of Jewish businesses and families featuring animals, it will show how American Jews expressed both ascendancy and kindness - the Jewish ethical approaches to animals delineated by religious studies scholar Aaron Gross – but also operated within a slightly different dialetic, of’ dependence on and defense of animals, born of the rough and tumble of immigrant religious life and Jewish acculturation in modernity.
This paper will explore the religious and ethical questions raised in Rivka Galchen’s short story, “How I Became a Vet.” Narrated by a woman working in emergency veterinary medicine, the story revolves around two plot points: the first, the fact that the narrator keeps receiving scathing online reviews from disgruntled clients; the second, the local dogs keep jumping off the same bridge as though attempting to die by suicide. On the one hand, this story is a commentary on the devastating effects of neoliberal capitalism on the veterinary profession. Should we really be measuring our veterinarians’ abilities through online reviews? Should we humans be reviewing them at all? On the other hand, “Becoming a Vet” makes a case for recognizing the religious, emotional, and physical labor bound up in being a veterinarian, showing that if we continue to neglect these dimensions, we risk the lives of animals and veterinarians alike.
The language of “entanglement” is conspicuous in contemporary analyses of human-animal relations. The framing of these relations as contextually “entangled” can work to immunize the human exploitation of animals from the kinds of ethical critique and social-political intervention applied to problematic human-human relations. In this paper, I underscore how appeals to entanglement, even appeals grounded in genuine and relevant feelings of love and bonding between humans and their animals, nevertheless deflect attention from the critical issue of domestication and the myriad harms it inherently—if variably—demands. I begin with the pioneering work of Donna Haraway and continue through an exploration of the recent texts of Radhika Govindrajan and Muhammed Kavesh. I then pivot to the work of Eva Haifa Giraud, Dinesh Wadiwel, and Paula Arcari to present alternative starting point that validates the significance of affect in human-animal relations while rejecting the preservation of an exploitative anthropocentric speciesism.