al
hard to read at times (I am scared of greek philosophy) but I loved this. This changed me. fuck capitalism
“Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I'd look like a dropout. But from the point of view of the space, I'd look like someone who was finally paying it attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I will ultimately answer when I die – I would know that I spent that day on Earth. In moments like this, even the question itself of the attention economy fades away. If you asked me to answer it, I might say – without lifting my eyes from the things growing and creeping along the ground – ‘I would prefer not to.'” p178
WOW this is an incredible book. Taylor writes about disability and multispecies kinship in such beautiful ways, and because of her I will never be able to extract the human/”animal” hierarchy from ableism! I feel like i learned so much in every chapter, but parts 3 and 4 were full of so much information that blew my mind... I already feel like I need to go back and reread them. This is full of so much love for disability and I appreciate seeing this in a more academic text. I also loved the chapter about her service dog and her role as her dog's service-human. :-)
I would only bring this down to a 4.5 because I feel like Taylor could have/should have expanded upon the limitations of the moral implications of veganism. she did write a caveat sentence or two that acknowledged the issues of imposing white + western ideology onto the entire human population that has very diverse relationships with eating animal products, but I feel like it was necessary to bring in some different Indigenous perspectives here. I found it hard to fully align with her ethical veganism in this context when there is such a long history of white environmentalists using their purported care for animals as a means of racialized control against Indigenous peoples and their different ways of life since time immemorial.
Interesting too to think about the many Indigenous epistemologies that view plants and animals as sentient and “person” enough to have the agency to offer themselves to other beings as a form of sustenance (especially with practices of reciprocal care in mind, as animals like us tend for, prune, and spread seeds for plants). I guess I just want to learn more about how to balance a respect for Indigenous sovereignty + ways of life with these ideas on even “ethical” meat-eating as ableist.
that being said, I did notice myself as an omnivore getting really uncomfortable with her push towards veganism as matter of anti-ableism, and I think that being uncomfortable is something really healthy and important for me to think about. I am definitely one of those people that she described, who continues to eat meat despite “feeling bad,” because of its convenience and the normalcy of eating meat in my culture. this gave me so much to reevaluate and I really need to stop pushing away the discomfort I feel with being criticized for eating meat, and instead use that as an opportunity to learn.
The main reason why I tend to feel like continuing to eat animal products is “natural” for us as animals because I guess I don't know where to draw the line.... Taylor's central thesis of animal cruelty stemming from a devaluation of creatures with different abilities is brilliant, but regarding the veganism discourse, I kept thinking about plants. western science (and much older indigenous epistemologies!) has already shown us that plants have a level of sentience. they might not have brains or pain receptors in the way that animals do, but vegetables still have abilities beyond our comprehension. is it ableist to keep eating vegetables because they are differently abled than us? what happens when we finally learn that plants feel pain, and love and fear? what do we eat at that point? isn't being entrenched in the web of life and consuming other creatures (just as we will be consumed by trillions of tiny creatures after death) just a part of what it means to be an animal, and to be alive at all? should we ultimately aim for harm reduction (eating less meat, abolishing factory farming, ending capitalism if possible please please) while still accepting that to be alive is to depend on our multispecies kin for survival?
obviously the meat industry and factory farming practice incredible levels of evil, capitalism bad, and I want animals and plants to be able to live and enjoy their lives with agency, but still... I really struggle with these thoughts and I also dislike that I keep leaning on them to justify continuing to eat animal products.
I didn't mean to write an entire essay here lol. this book gave me so much to think about. overall, this book rules, Sunaura Taylor rules, disability is an art, etc etc
This taught me so much! so many horrifying testimonies in here and it broke my heart. The chapters/timeline felt a bit disjointed, and I do feel like Hancock glossed over and slightly discounted the work done by minorities like Black Americans to get attention drawn to their plight. but besides that, this was an incredible work. learning that no Roma people were invited to testify at Nuremberg blew my mind. IMO this should be mandatory reading for anyone studying race, especially in Europe.
The handful of racist descriptions and lukewarm attempts at seeming progressive in regards to Zionism (ex: one sentence about a Jewish character in Jerusalem saying that she feels bad for the Arabs whose house she now lives in) really sucked. also I found Hanna's chapters to be a bit slow and a little insufferable at points. however, holy shit this book was so cool to me across the board. Love the historical chapters, love the depth of character given to all of these people and places throughout history. i really enjoyed it. Also loved Zahra's gay vibes
It's weird that Glidden would go on a Birthright trip armed with the knowledge of the violent settler colonial occupation of Palestine and come out of it with more sympathy towards Israel as a state. Certain parts of this book were refreshing – I appreciated that she kept calling out Israeli propaganda and historical whitewashing – but it also got to a weird point where she started to find comfort in her own racism and not really critique that. This book confirmed a lot about what I imagine Birthright trips and ethnostates to be like, so it was really interesting in that way. But overall it's just overwhelmingly white and her bias as a white Jew is hard to ignore when considering the lack of the Palestinian perspective in the book.
I know it's a memoir, not a fictionalized narrative, so I don't mean to blame the 2007 version of this author for not doing everything perfectly. It's an honest look at how Zionism manifests in the lives of white Americans and I appreciate that she tries to be critical of her privilege at points.... but still, I finished this book feeling really disappointed and annoyed.
Cool concept, and i love gay people, but the entire time I was reading this prose i was thinking of the tumblr post thats like
classics major who really likes halsey: you once made flowers grow within my ribcage but you were like icarus flying too close to the sun and your ichor wings are melting and now divinity stains your bronze fingertips like a pomegranate and you are holy holy holy
I loved parts of this. I love a protagonist that I can relate to about my shortcomings!! but also it was so incredibly dense... maybe that was the purpose, to make you as the reader feel as suffocated and disinterested as Selin is, but about halfway through this book I started going crazy and just desperately wanted it to be over. i related so hard to selin in the last sentence, but regarding how i felt after reading this book.
Ogion lore?? DRAGONFLY?? gay witches? Come on man are you kidding me. Ursula, you are a genius and I owe you my whole life. Dragonfly especially made me so happy, not only cause Irian is amazing and I want her but we also get a deeper look into the catastrophic levels of Autism going on with the Masters Patterner, Herbal and Namer. this is a beautiful thing.
