Dinesh Wadiwel | |
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Born | Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Western Sydney |
Influences | Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Achille Mbembe |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Social theory,political theory |
Sub-discipline | Disability studies,critical animal studies |
Institutions | University of Sydney |
Notable works | The War Against Animals |
Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel is an Australian social and political theorist who is presently an associate professor in Human Rights and Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Sydney. His work addresses critical animal studies,the rights of disabled people,and theoretical perspectives on violence. [1] [2]
Wadiwel worked for 15 years in the third sector,including with the Australian Council of Social Service. He completed his doctorate in Political Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Sydney in 2006. [3] He subsequently moved to the University of Sydney,where he is now (as of 2023 [update] ) an associate professor. [2]
Wadiwel is the author of the 2015 monograph The War Against Animals,published by Brill. In the book,he argues that humans are in a state of (literal) war with animals. [4] [5] [6] The primary philosophical influence is the work of Michel Foucault,though other important influences include Giorgio Agamben,Roberto Esposito,and Achille Mbembe. For Wadiwel,mainstream approaches to animal ethics (including the classic works of Peter Singer and Tom Regan,and more recent works of Donna Haraway as well as those of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka) are insufficient for failing to appreciate the near-complete internalisation of a human belief in sovereignty over animals;indeed,he argues that the works reinforce them. Drawing upon Foucauldian notions of biopower,governmentality,and counter-conduct,Wadiwel argues for the existence of,and examines the detail of,the war against animals. He argues that capitalism is complicit in the war,and that the commodification of animals is an inherently violent act. Wadiwel calls for resistance against the war. This resistance includes veganism and other pro-animal practices,but also a truce,even if only (initially) for a day. [4] [5] [6]
Wadiwel was a part of The Human Animal Research Network Editorial Collective that edited the 2015 Sydney University Press collection Animals in the Anthropocene:Critical Perspectives on Non-human Futures. [7] He also co-edited the 2016 collection Foucault and Animals with Matthew Chrulew. [8] [9] In 2023,Wadiwel's book Animals and Capital was published by Edinburgh University Press. [10]
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has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Posthumanism or post-humanism is an idea in continental philosophy and critical theory responding to the presence of anthropocentrism in 21st-century thought. Posthumanization comprises "those processes by which a society comes to include members other than 'natural' biological human beings who, in one way or another, contribute to the structures, dynamics, or meaning of the society."
Jan or Johannes Swammerdam was a Dutch biologist and microscopist. His work on insects demonstrated that the various phases during the life of an insect—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—are different forms of the same animal. As part of his anatomical research, he carried out experiments on muscle contraction. In 1658, he was the first to observe and describe red blood cells. He was one of the first people to use the microscope in dissections, and his techniques remained useful for hundreds of years.
The Anthropocene is a now rejected proposal for the name of a geological epoch that would follow the Holocene, dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth up to the present day. It was rejected in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in terms of being a defined geologic period. The impacts of humans affect Earth's oceans, geology, geomorphology, landscape, limnology, hydrology, ecosystems and climate. The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen for example in biodiversity loss and climate change. Various start dates for the Anthropocene have been proposed, ranging from the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution, to as recently as the 1960s. The biologist Eugene F. Stoermer is credited with first coining and using the term anthropocene informally in the 1980s; Paul J. Crutzen re-invented and popularized the term. However, in 2024 the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) rejected the Anthropocene Epoch proposal for inclusion in the Geologic Time Scale.
A feral cat or a stray cat is an unowned domestic cat that lives outdoors and avoids human contact; it does not allow itself to be handled or touched, and usually remains hidden from humans. Feral cats may breed over dozens of generations and become a local apex predator in urban, savannah and bushland environments, and especially on islands where native animals did not evolve alongside predators. Some feral cats may become more comfortable with people who regularly feed them, but even with long-term attempts at socialization, they usually remain aloof and reject human touch. Of the 700 million cats in the world, an estimated 480 million are feral.
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John Frow is an Australian writer of literary theory, narrative theory, intellectual property law, and cultural studies. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Sydney.
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Anthony Burke is an Australian political theorist and international relations scholar. He is Professor of Environmental Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales. He is co-principal at the Planet Politics Institute.
Niall Lucy was an Australian writer and scholar best known for his work in deconstruction.
Carnism is a concept used in discussions of humanity's relation to other animals, defined as a prevailing ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products, especially meat. Carnism is presented as a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanisms and mostly unchallenged assumptions. The term carnism was coined by social psychologist and author Melanie Joy in 2001 and popularized by her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2009).
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Siobhan O'Sullivan was an Australian political scientist and political theorist. She was an associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. Her research focused, among other things, on animal welfare policy and the welfare state. She was the author of Animals, Equality and Democracy and a coauthor of Getting Welfare to Work and Buying and Selling the Poor. She co-edited Contracting-out Welfare Services and The Political Turn in Animal Ethics. She was the founding host of the regular animal studies podcast Knowing Animals, as well as a founder of the Australasian Animal Studies Association.
Political Animals and Animal Politics is a 2014 edited collection published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by the green political theorists Marcel Wissenburg and David Schlosberg. The work addresses the emergence of academic animal ethics informed by political philosophy as opposed to moral philosophy. It was the first edited collection to be published on the topic, and the first book-length attempt to explore the breadth and boundaries of the literature. As well as a substantial introduction by the editors, it features ten sole-authored chapters split over three parts, respectively concerning institutional change for animals, the relationship between animal ethics and ecologism, and real-world laws made for the benefit of animals. The book's contributors were Wissenburg, Schlosberg, Manuel Arias-Maldonado, Chad Flanders, Christie Smith, Clemens Driessen, Simon Otjes, Kurtis Boyer, Per-Anders Svärd, and Mihnea Tanasescu. The focus of their individual chapters varies, but recurring features include discussions of human exceptionalism, exploration of ways that animal issues are or could be present in political discourse, and reflections on the relationship between theory and practice in politics.
Clare Palmer is a British philosopher, theologian and scholar of environmental and religious studies. She is known for her work on environmental and animal ethics. She was appointed as a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University in 2010. She had previously held academic appointments at the Universities of Greenwich, Stirling, and Lancaster in the United Kingdom, and Washington University in St. Louis in the United States, among others.
Kendra Coulter is a Canadian scholar who is Professor in Management and Organizational Studies at Huron University College at Western University. She is the author of Revolutionizing Retail: Workers, Political Action, and Social Change (2014), Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity (2016), and Defending Animals: Inside the Front Lines of Animal Protection (2023). She is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
The Animals & Society Institute (ASI) is an American non-profit scholarly organization that works to expand knowledge about human-animal relationships, develop knowledge and resources in the field of human-animal studies (HAS), and create resources to address the relationship between animal cruelty and other forms of violence.
Philosophical ethology is a field of multidisciplinary research which gathers natural sciences, social science, human studies and is dedicated to the issue of animal subjectivity. It is about an ontological concept needing a philosophical place rather than a descriptive issue. With precursors in the 19th century, it emerged in its current in the 2010s.
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An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food, as a Moral Duty is a book on ethical vegetarianism and animal rights written by Joseph Ritson, first published in 1802.
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External audio | |
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![]() Wadiwel as the guest on episode 1 of the Knowing Animals podcast (2015) | |
![]() Wadiwel as the guest on episode 116 of the Knowing Animals podcast (2019) |
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