Gunawan, M. Navigating human and non-human animal relations: Okja, foucault and animal welfare laws (2018) Alternative Law Journal, 43 (4), pp. 263-268.
Abstract
This article draws upon a Foucauldian analysis of power to conceptualise the human and non-human animal relations throughout the Netflix film Okja. The article examines how ‘super-pig’ Okja’s experiences (and subjectivities) are deeply shaped by the ‘apparatuses’ within which Okja is situated. As the power relationships and practices of ‘domination’ portrayed in Okja highlight, the legal categorisation of animals and their foundations within mainstream discourses reflect, and perpetuate, society’s understanding of the moral significance of animals. Okja’s transformation throughout the film, as well as her very existence as a hybrid ‘super-pig’, confuses the legal categorisation of non-human animals and highlights a double standard in the law. © The Author(s) 2018.
Author Keywords
Animal law; Animal rights; Art; Arts and entertainment; Arts and law; Critical legal theory
The leading light in the philosophy of animal rights is headed by StephenPuryear at North Carolina State University. Two papers one on #Kant’s position and another beauty on #SchopenhauersTheRightsofAnimals. I argue that Schopenhauer’s ascription of (moral) rights to animals flows
naturally from his distinctive analysis of the concept of a right. In contrast
to those who regard rights as fundamental and then cast wrongdoing as a
matter of violating rights, he takes wrong (Unrecht) to be the more
fundamental notion and defines the concept of a right (Recht) in its terms.
He then offers an account of wrongdoing which makes it plausible to
suppose that at least many animals can be wronged and thus, by
extension, have rights. The result, I argue, is a perspective on the nature
of moral rights in general, and the idea of animal rights in particular, that
constitutes an important and plausible alternative to the more familiar
views advanced by philosophers in recent decades. https://philarchive.org/archive/PURSOTv3 And Kant whom he argues with effectively https://stephenpuryear.wordpress.com/category/animal-ethics/