'Solidarity with all the Trainer-Killers!':De-individualization and De-subjectivation of Politics within the Animal Liberation Movement

Abstract

All too often the analysis of political actions revolves around attempts to determine who is (or who could be) its subject. The basic assumption at the heart of this is that political actors can be defined with sufficient precision. Moreover, these actors, although often considerably different from each other, are still seen to have a common structure – that of the subject, which has always been a human being. The focal point of this article would be to offer a counter-thesis on the existence of forms of political actions that subvert the conception of the subject as its necessary foundation. This phenomenon becomes most clearly perceptible when considering those activist practices that imply the involvement of those who are deprived of subjectivity. The animal liberation movement could provide a rather intriguing case for such an analysis. Drawing on the works of Michel Foucault, Silvia Federici and Jodi Dean in the first part of the article, the author will attempt to outline the genealogy of the modern political subject and demonstrate how the positioning of the subject as a necessary foundation for political actions can prove problematic in emancipatory projects. In the second part, several cases from animal liberation movement are examined by combining the theoretical approaches of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with queer theory. This analysis enables us to consider political action as a heterogeneous assemblage, which is carried out at different levels, and does not always presuppose the subject as its central figure.