Why Singer?

Animal Liberation, activist bibles and other tales

A few weeks ago, I wrote that what makes writing a form of activism is not so much the intention of the author or the content of the text, but the process of reading: the fact that a particular text is picked up, passed around, discussed and debated among groups of people committed to making change.

Few books from the past half century have become associated with an entire political movement more than Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. First published in 1975, it argued that the human treatment of nonhuman animals as inferior beings is based not on reason but on prejudice, and that the principle of equality among human beings should be extended to other species. Much of the book is dedicated to a detailed account and critique of the exploitation of animals in scientific experimentation and agriculture. Animal Liberation ends with an invitation to readers to become vegetarians, and includes some handy tips and simple recipes.

Singer is a philosopher; he is no stranger to ideas and debate. His writing is sharp, passionate and direct. He loves to talk. But he also walks the walk. He eats his greens.

It’s hard to exaggerate the impact of Animal Liberation. Some years ago, while listening to interviews with animal rights activists in England at the British Library Sound Archive, I was struck by how often Singer’s name came up. One activist recalls that in the mid-70s Singer's “books were all over the place”. Another notes that Animal Liberation gave the cause a serious philosophical foundation, helping to change not only minds but also the law. By the time of the book’s 1991 edition, Singer was able to boast that Animal Liberation had been dubbed “the bible of the animal rights movement”.

Yet Animal Liberation did not come out of the blue. Singer was strongly influenced by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who famously said of animals in 1789 (the year the French Revolution started): “The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”. By the time Singer published his book, there had been a vibrant animal welfare movement in Britain for at least 150 years. While he and other students debated moral philosophy at Oxford in the early 70s, more militant animal rights groups, such as the Hunt Saboteurs and the Animal Liberation Front, were engaged in direct action to save animals from cruelty in the countryside and research labs. By the time Singer wrote the chapter, “Down on the Factory Farm… or what happened to your dinner when it was still an animal”, Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry had been circulating among animal advocates for a decade.

What made Animal Liberation so influential was not just its author’s admirable ability to present abstract moral theory and detailed empirical information in clear and accessible language, but the fact that it captured the zeitgeist of the 1970s.

Singer compared the “tyranny of humans over other animals” to the different forms of oppression suffered by people. “The struggle against this tyranny is a struggle as important as any of the moral and social issues that have been fought over in recent years”, he wrote, comparing this fight to the major social movements of the 60s and 70s: Black Liberation, Gay Liberation, Women’s Liberation. We can debate the appropriateness of these analogies. What is beyond doubt is that the radical politics of the era created a context into which Animal Liberation could land, making its demands sound both reasonable and urgent.

Although he framed his arguments using utilitarian philosophy, many of the ideas in Animal Liberation were not original. Singer borrowed the term speciesism from fellow Oxford Group member Richard Ryder, who coined it in 1970, also inspired by contemporary struggles against sexism and racism. Others in the Oxford Group influenced Animal Liberation. In a 1982 article titled “The Oxford Vegetarians: A Personal Account”, Singer writes about how he became a vegetarian while doing his PhD in the early 70s. He and his wife Renata had met a small group of fellow students, including Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, a couple from Canada. The Godlovitches were vegetarians and were preparing an edited volume called Animals, Men and Morals. Singer spent some time reading and making suggestions on Ros Godlovitch’s contribution to the book:

“Ros was a little unsure about the revisions she was making, and I spent a lot of time trying to help her clarify and strengthen her arguments. In the end she went her own way, and I do not think any of my suggestions were incorporated into the revised version of the article as it appeared in Animals, Men and Morals ­– but in the process of putting her arguments in the strongest possible form, I had convinced myself that the logic of the vegetarian position was irrefutable”.

Singer is at pains to stress that Ros Godlovtich’s ideas were not the same as his. But “helping” her to “clarify” them served to solidify his intellectual and moral position. After Animals, Men and Morals was published in the UK and failed to make the splash its editors had hoped, Singer decided to help promote the volume by reviewing it in the New York Review of Books. On the back of this review (titled “Animal Liberation”), Singer was offered a book contract. He took up the offer, reflecting that “there was obviously room for a different kind of book, more systematic in its approach than a compilation of articles by different authors”. The rest is history.

I came across this origin story of Animal Liberation just two years ago, in a small Penguin collection of Singer’s key writing on animals published under the title Why Vegan? I’ve read and heard countless activists’ accounts of the formative effect Animal Liberation had on their commitment to animal rights; but this was the first time I had read that the “bible of the animal rights movement” would perhaps never have been written if it weren’t for the ideas and ambitions of a young female philosopher.

It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of a woman having a great idea and a man taking all the credit for it.

In recent years, there have been challenges to the portrayal of Singer as the “founder of the contemporary animal rights movement”. A new book on the Oxford Group highlights the collective roots of the movement in England. In the words of authors Robert Garner and Yewande Okuleye, their research does not support “the solitary genius model of creative endeavour” and instead highlights collaboration. Through conversations with feminist animal activists and scholars in Spain, I have learned that there is growing interest there in Ros Godlovitch’s contributions to animal rights philosophy.

The singular status accorded to Animal Liberation and Singer in the history of the contemporary animal rights movement in the West says a lot about the ways that histories of grassroots movements are remembered and recounted, whether in the media, in university philosophy classes, or in activist circles. As Sarah Schulman notes in her recent history of Act Up New York, mainstream histories of activist movements too often focus on a handful of heroic public figures, ignoring or distorting group dynamics and the roles of women and men of colour and other marginalised groups.  

Writing activist histories necessarily involves attention to the roles of individuals, including those who have been leaders and prominent figures. But their stories must be contextualised in their times and as part of, not apart from, the activism of those whose roles were perhaps less public but no less important.

Writing stories of movement histories with all their complexity, conflicts and collectivity, is a vital task for activists today because, in Schulman’s words, such writing “invites all of us, in the present, to imagine ourselves as potentially effective activists and supporters no matter who we are”.

I’ll be back in September with some more thoughts on Schulman’s original and insightful approach to writing activist history. In the meantime, enjoy the summer, water the foxes, don’t water the lawn. And keep reading, writing and acting.