The 11th Annual Institute for Critical Animal Studies Conference is coming up soon at Canisius College (Buffalo, NY) from March 2nd to the 4th. We thought it would be a great time to contact some of the people pushing ICAS forward to find out about how they got involved, and how their work is shaped by, and shaping, Critical Animal Studies. The first up in this series is Prof. Kim Socha (Normandale Community College). Kim is a Director with ICAS and just released a book “Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation” as part of the Critical Animal Studies series at Rodopi Press. We thank Kim for taking the time to answer some questions for us and look forward to her upcoming presentation at the Conference!

Can you talk a bit about your background in animal advocacy and your entry into the academy?

It took me a while to really get involved in animal advocacy in an intensive way, as opposed to dabbling in groups here and there. I was a vegetarian for a long time, but struggled with going vegan for the simple reason that I liked cheese; I won’t even try to pretend I had some great philosophical purpose for not going vegan sooner. My reasons were purely self-indulgent. It was when I began my Ph.D. program in 2006 that I began to work more ardently as an animal advocate. I took a course in Critical Vanguard Studies—which entails exploration of aesthetic and political groups such as Dada, Surrealism, the Black Arts Movement, etc.—to solidify what I have come to see as my personal conception of the animal liberation movement (ALM). While taking that course, I also began to read about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) via Anthony Nocella II and Steven Best’s Terrorists or Freedom Fighters. I became convinced that the ALM is a contemporary manifestation of the avant-garde, those groups and individuals who see reality in advance of mainstream popular conceptions (i.e. war is an inevitability of human existence and humans must eat nonhumans to live), and we strive to help others see the world differently as well. At that time, I began to volunteer at a no-kill animal shelter and speak on campus about nonhuman animal issues. And, of course, I went vegan. My timidity had also held me back from being a stronger advocate for years, but viewing Shannon Keith’s documentary Behind the Mask, about the ALF, allowed me to put my social anxieties aside and realize that my fears of being misunderstood and mocked were far less significant than the institutionalized brutality of animal treatment the world over. Once moving to Minnesota from Pennsylvania in 2009, I joined the Animal Rights Coalition (ARC), a grassroots abolitionist animal advocacy group with a thirty year history. I now sit on ARC’s board, and I am also on the board if the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS).

Can you tell us about what drew you to the Institute for Critical Animal Studies?

ICAS’s Rodopi book series was the second publisher to whom I sent my book manuscript. And the only reason they were not the first is because I was not immediately aware that they had a book series. I had faith in ICAS because of their stated mission to abolish exploitation in a holistic way, including animals, humans and the environment, and I was pleased that their book series accepted manuscripts from academics and activists. I did not see ICAS as trying to establish yet another esoteric theory that with no real world applications (all deference to the Deconstructionists) that will only hold meaning in higher education. Plus, I was a follower of Nocella’s work, so his association with ICAS as co-founder and Executive Director made me confident that this was a sound organization. I feel honored to have published through their Rodopi series, edited by Drs. Vasile Stănescu and Helena Pederson, two of the best editors I can imagine working with.

You are also involved in prison abolition advocacy as well as radical education advocacy. Can you tell us a bit about the projects you are involved in?

I believe that our overflowing prisons are society’s problem, and not necessarily the problems of individual prisoners. In many ways, our culture produces prisoners because it is fundamentally unjust and set up for certain demographic groups to “fail” at the American dream (i.e. African Americans in poor urban communities). This is especially true in terms of America’s drug laws, with about half of U.S. prisoners sitting in jail cells for drug-related crimes. I should also explain that I do support anarchism, as well as the legalization of all drugs. (The anarchy/drug connection is a much longer story that I don’t have time to discuss here.) This is why I am interested in prisoner advocacy work. The incarcerated are not evil individuals, but rather, individuals who have been forced by an inherently flawed system to engage in illegal activities. Due to prison overpopulation, the term “correctional” facility has become laughable. Not enough prisoners are given the chance to actually transform. Rather, they often leave prison more hardened then when they first got there. I’m not talking about the Ted Bundys of the world, of course, but those who break laws in a country where laws are set by a few privileged people who often have financial motives for establishing those laws. In other words, we live in a plutocracy, not a democratic nation, and until the broken system is fixed, prisons will never be the answer to social ills.

As to my advocacy work, I am involved with Minnesota Circles of Support and Accountability (MnCoSA), a program that helps recently paroled sex offenders integrate back into society so that they do not repeat their offenses. I have worked with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault before, so my interest in MnCoSA—which has about a 75% success rate in helping offenders not to repeat their crimes—is not just about the individual offender, who may have committed a crime that I personally find revolting; it is about making sure that those in the community remain safe from sexual violence. And again, it is the crime that is revolting, not the offender.

I am also a part of Twin Cities Save the Kids (STK), which Anthony Nocella was a part of in New York and has now brought to Minnesota. This award-winning program enters youth detention facilities to help children develop skills and perspectives that will keep them out of incarceration and break the school-to-prison pipeline. Some of this is done through hip hop pedagogy and poetry, which the kids find much more relatable than what they were learning in school (which may be why many stop going to school). We are also beginning to develop a program at local jails where we can work with teaching adults, some of whom are going to be in prison for life, through group building activities and education (i.e. obtaining a GED). Change is possible if people are given access to the means of transformation. I don’t want to sound too Pollyanna-ish, as I don’t think that I or any of these programs will change every individual or the world within my lifetime. My realistic goal is simply to let the incarcerated know that alternatives exist. There are many who want to take advantage of these alternatives, which are what MnCoSA and STK offer.

As to our educational system, from kindergarten to higher education, it is a fucking mess. Based on Euro-American models of learning, students are taught early on to stifle creativity and learning is cordoned off into disciplines (English, History, Math, Science) with very little thought to the intersectional, holistic nature of learning. I am part of the problem. I work as a community college instructor because I believe that education should be open to and affordable for everyone. However, I am also an English instructor, and in order to keep in step with the policies of my institution, I teach many traditional modes of writing, which are formulaic and based upon Western conceptions of reason-based rhetoric and logic. I struggle with this on an ideological level, but I also want to give my students what they want—preparation for the world we currently live in, not Kim Socha’s vision of what that world should look like.

There is a belief that much of the confusion around “Human Animal Studies” and “Critical Animal Studies” can be traced back to disciplines “English” and “Cultural Studies.” As someone from the academy who works in those disciplines do you feel like this criticism is unfair? Or do you struggle with finding peers who keep their work rooted in liberatory praxis?

I think the criticism is fair. I’d also like to think that although my doctoral diploma says “English Literature and Criticism,” that my degree is really in Cultural Studies (when I discuss my book, this will become clearer). I’ve met those academics who continue to look at English via New Criticism and Formulism, but I also see a massive shift away from those out-dated modes and into the arena of Cultural Studies, which is less Euro-centric and more holistic. However, I think that to be a real Cultural Studies scholar, one must be an activist. Many aren’t. I’ve met these individuals in higher education and looked at them for mentorship, but all I found was careerism. In kind, I think that street-level activists are engaged in Cultural Studies on a fundamental plane that scholarship alone will never reach.

The same can be said for the rift between Human Animal Studies (HAS) and Critical Animal Studies (CAS). Some facets of HAS seem to look at animals as curiosities, as objects with very little agency, which is not to discount those vegan HAS scholars who are sympathetic to nonhumans. However, much of HAS seems divorced from, as you say, “liberatory praxis.” (Ok, so an anthropology scholar has analyzed the use of snake symbolism throughout human history. So what? How does this help animals now?) I have been on HAS discussion boards, and I have seen those who support vivisection identifying as HAS scholars, even if they want to make animal research more “humane.” Even the term Human Animal Studies seems to reinforce the binary between humans and animals. In contrast, CAS scholars and activists are just that—critical of human use of nonhuman animals and active in their protest of that use. Yes, I write CAS scholarship, but I also “hit the streets” to take part in protests, leaflet, organize events, etc. CAS also considers how oppressed human animals and the environment factor into a more encompassing view of domination. When I look at the term “Critical Animal Studies,” I include humans in that conception of animals, and I think that part of our goal as activists and scholars is to destroy the binary by reminding others that humans are animals too, though animals with greater social agency and, thus, greater responsibility to end oppression.

You just released the first book in an ICAS series, entitled, “Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation.” Can you tell us about the book and do you think it will be useful for people trying to bridge these two communities of thought/resistance?

Women, Destruction and the Avant-Garde: A Paradigm for Animal Liberation (WDAG) attempts to integrate the animal liberation movement into the history of the avant-garde, which refers to those politico-aesthetic groups who use(d) the arts as a means of social protest. The term avant-garde literally translates from the French as “advanced guard,” in military terms, and it has been used to refer to social critics who are ahead of their time, who see a reality that the popular mainstream either cannot see or chooses to ignore. For example, early twentieth-century Dada and Surrealism arose in response to the massive loss of human lives in WWI, and these individuals were fierce social critics as well as poets and artists. The animal liberation movement (ALM) arose in response to the indefensible way that humans use nonhumans, and we are a political movement that relies on the symbolism of the artist. To wit, my book looks at protests and ALF/ELF actions as symbolic acts that attempt to help others see the dangers of speciesism, capitalism and environmental destruction. I consider WDAG interdisciplinary, factoring in literary analysis, feminist manifestos, popular culture, radical political theory, true crime and, of course, animal liberation theory and praxis. Whether or not this can bridge the chasm between HAS, CAS and other academic disciplines remains to be seen.

Now, on to the problem. As visionary as they were, the Surrealists were (justifiably) accused of misogyny, so to the ALM. This is a movement dominated by women, but the patriarchal, rationalist male voice continues to govern the movement (though some contest this idea). Thus, WDAG looks at how avant-garde female writers and performance artists have responded to patriarchy and misogyny in marginalized vanguard culture, considering how their performances can act as a “paradigm” for the ALM. Quite often, these women have used their bodies to protest their cultural impotence on the social hierarchy of rights, but often times the ways they use their bodies simply mirror the position that patriarchal culture has put them in: as objectified beings desired for their bodies but ignored as independent individuals with social agency. PETA does this with women as well, hoping that by exploiting one group of animal, women, they will liberate other species. In contrast, there are those artists who have used their bodies with integrity (i.e. Carolee Schneemann and Coco Fusco), so I look at the ways in which the ALM can adopt their attempts at liberation.

I am drawn to the notion of “destruction” that runs through the your new book as the term itself carries such power. Do you see “destruction” as a narrative that can lead us out of stalled understandings of “reform” vs. “abolition.”

The first chapter of WDAG looks at a mid-ish twentieth-century anti-capitalist avant-garde movement known as the Destructivists, for through destruction, they claimed, rebirth and renewal are possible. They didn’t go around destroying things for the sake of destruction alone, but to dispute the commodification of art. They would, in fact, destroy their own art as a way to protest art as object desired and “corporatized.” I relate this aesthetic to both a true crime event—the mutilation and torture death of Sylvia Likens—and the work of three female writers who have written about destruction in the sense that if you destroy what keeps you oppressed, you will be free. In 1914, Mina Loy’s “Feminist Manifesto” declares that when girls hit puberty, their hymens should be destroyed, for virginity held cultural capital during that time period. In 1967, Valerie Solanas, famous for shooting Pop artist Andy Warhol, wrote the SCUM Manifesto, in which she explains that the only hope for a culture in decline is to scrap the whole thing and start over, and this included the mass genocide of all men. Next, I look at a novel by Katherine Dunn called Geek Love; there is a lot going on in this interesting text, but here I want to focus on a character named Miss Mary Lick, a wealthy woman who pays attractive women to make themselves undesirable through horrible acts of disfigurement. She believes that only by making women unattractive to men can they became independent beings. These are fascinating ideas, but ethically unviable, as well as presented tongue-in-cheek (one hopes). Still, these varied writers touch on a significant point: destroying the cause of the problem may be the only avenue for renewal.

This is why I am against reform, though not reformists, as I believe that they do work that is in keeping with their compassion for animals, however misguided I find them to be. However, reform is just that, a way of reforming what already exists—laws and standards developed by those with financial interest in maintaining animals as machines. When that power is kept in the hands of the power brokers, real change is off the agenda. The recent agreement between the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and United Egg Producers (UEP) is a perfect example of this agenda, and the moderate changes the UEP promises to make in egg production still maintain animals as property, product and machine. I think the legal system and humans’ views of nonhuman animals need to be destroyed before there is any chance for liberation, and this destruction can manifest in varied ways: from helping someone go vegan at outreach event to starting a revolution that topples the legal system and the animal/global industrial complex. Destruction need not be a bad word. In fact, I find it liberating, whether one is vandalizing public property to leave an animal liberation message or breaking into a research lab to save a nonhuman animal from his/her life of torture.

As to whether or not destruction “can lead us out of stalled understandings of ‘reform’ vs. ‘abolition,’” I have my doubts because reformists and even some abolitionists will not be able and/or willing to divorce that term from the violence that seems to go along with it, which is not necessarily the case. That said, I hope that those who read my book gain a better understanding of destruction as an avenue out the desperate situations into which we’ve imprisoned nonhuman animals, the environment and ourselves.