In 2015, some members of the Humanities Faculty at the University of Cape Town proposed that animal products be taken off the menu at official Faculty functions. The proposal was rejected. Cordeiro-Rodrigues, in his paper “The racialization of animal advocacy in South Africa”, this journal, blames the proposers for this rejection, claiming that “the proposal’s approach neglects the racialized history of animal advocacy in South Africa, while also being carried out at an inopportune time and context.” We dispute Cordeiro-Rodrigues’ claims on a number of grounds, and argue that not only does he fail to substantiate his claims against the proposers, he also mischaracterizes the history of animal advocacy in South Africa, and, most worryingly, ignores the immense suffering perpetrated on animals in animal agribusiness.
I argue that cultural practices that harm animals are not morally defensible: Tradition cannot justify cruelty. My conclusion applies to all such practices, including ones that are long-standing, firmly entrenched, or held sacred by their practitioners. Following Mary Midgley, I argue that cultural practices are open to moral scrutiny, even from outsiders. Because animals have moral status, they may not be harmed without good reason. I argue that the importance of religious or cultural rituals to adherents does not count as a sufficiently good reason to harm or kill animals, since rituals are inherently symbolic, and cultures are able to adapt and change, making adherence to cruel traditions unnecessary.
The concept of 'mentalization' has recently provided a fertile resource for thinking about various issues in psychoanalysis, including attachment, children's play, personality disorders and the work of interpretation within the analytic setting. Mentalization also provides fruitful ways of thinking about how we read. This paper will suggest that book reading is akin to mind reading: engaging with certain literary texts is akin to understanding the minds of others from the subjective perspective required by mentalization. This way of thinking about literature provides a useful way of understanding its value. The paper will focus specifically on the uses of irony and free indirect speech in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion. Austen's use of literary techniques provides a way of understanding the inner lives of her characters via the ironic voice of the implied author, and requires the reader to engage in the kinds of understanding and insight required for mentalization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.