Plato between the Teeth of the Beast: Animals and Democracy at the LSE

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Danielle Sands, on behalf of The Forum for European Philosophy (FEP), has very generously invited me to speak at the London School of Economics on the 11th February 2014 (6.30 – 8.00 pm) as part of a series entitled “European Provocations” (link here). Also podcast is here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=2247

This will be my final paper in the UK for a while, as I’ll be shipping out to Australia the following day.

Below are the (short and long) abstracts for the lecture, which is free and open to the public, and which will continue and deepen the consideration of animals and democracy that began with my paper on Plato’s Republic and the cannibal animals for the London Conference in Critical Thought back in 2012 (which can be accessed on this blog). It would be great if I could see some of you there!

Plato between the Teeth of the Beast: 

Animals and Democracy in Tomorrow’s Europe

Short Abstract

How important are animals to the constitution of democracy? In constructing his famous Republic, Plato expressly warns of the dangerous link between the liberation of animals, the uprising of the proletariat, and the founding of democracy. Unwittingly, Plato also reveals that an increased “sensitivity” towards the fate of bonded animals marks an essential first step towards a truly free society. From this starting point, Richard Iveson will thus consider whether the egalitarian entanglement of humans and other animals in fact constitutes the prior condition of any democratic community.

Abstract:

Reading two short extracts from Plato’s dialogues, one from Timaeus and one from the Republic, alongside a number of articles taken from the recent EC Directive on the scientific “use” of nonhuman animals, “Plato between the Teeth of the Beast” considers the place and the relevance of nonhuman animals to the constitution and conservation of democracy. Here, we will consider what Plato, always scathing in his attacks upon democracy, believes to be the revolutionary relation between the freedom of nonhuman animals, the uprising of the working classes, and the founding of a democratic city plagued by the double threat of anarchy and tyranny. Plato argues that humanity must, and for political rather than economic reasons, harden its heart to the ongoing exploitation and suffering of “other animals” (this latter forming a group that, in times of crisis, includes all those forced to exchange the labour of their bodies in order to survive). By contrast, I suggest that a rigorous understanding of democracy requires that we pay heed to this dangerous “instinct” for freedom revealed in the first instance by the intimacy of our animal relationships. Only then do we begin to gain a sense of an explicitly democratic inter- and intra-relation of human and nonhuman beings.

No longer based upon anthropocentric notions of pity or compassion, this relation gains further clarity when considered in the light of Jacques Derrida’s often misunderstood notion of “eating well.” This will then lead to a consideration of the role played by the mouth in the constitution of both Plato’s Republic and the democratic city. According to Plato, the revolutionary animal body of the worker must first be “tamed” through the force-feeding of an institutional “Guardian.” The Platonic Guardian, in other words, ensures the closed mouth of the worker, a corporeal suppression that Georges Bataille describes as “the narrow constipation of a strictly human attitude.” By contrast, only the wide open mouths of human and nonhuman animals alike permit the potential articulation of a fully democratic socius. Unwittingly no doubt, what Plato’s discourse on the ideal Republic lets slip is that sensitivity to the freedom of other animals is an essential first step in the constitution of a truly free society. Such is the sensitivity for shared nourishment, for eating well. Animal others, then, become fundamental to any understanding of community, and hence to the success or otherwise of various anti-capitalist movements active throughout Europe and beyond. Such a sensitivity forces the formerly closed mouth wide open, preparing to devour any social pact founded upon gross inequality, slavery and injustice.