Towards a Vegan-Based Ethic

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank, in a broad way, everyone who has done important research in the field of animal rights, and whose research has had an impact on my own, namely Peter Singer, Carol J. Adams, Michael Pollan, Namit Arora, Lesli Bisgould, Wendy King, and Jennifer Stopford.

In a more specific way, I’d like to thank my amazing professor, Dr. Lisa Micheelsen for her constant support, encouragement, and breadth of knowledge. If everyone were to have a professor as awesome as she is, I think we’d all be truly unstoppable!

I would like to also thank my awesome mom, Dr. Isabella Colalillo Kates, for her tireless editing help, and her constant support. My sister, Samantha for being very supportive, my aunt Dr. Giuliana Colalillo, Catherine Legere, and our fur family members, past and present: they are loved.

Foreword

I first met the author of this volume when she took a graduate course towards her Master’s degree from me. Throughout our work together, we established that we shared a common interest in animal advocacy and a common belief that using animals in the service of our own interests in a modern, industrialized society is seriously, ethically flawed and problematic on many levels. This shared passion lead to many interesting conversations, and eventually, when Micol was ready to embark on the final project for her Master’s degree, she approached me to supervise her. Certainly, this is not my usual area of academic study—I am a Classicist by trade (of all things!) —but a large part of my work does rely on an appreciation of critical theory and theoretical issues, particularly in relation to race and gender in the study of the past, both of which represent historically silenced perspectives. The critical study of animal issues is emerging today, much like race and gender, as a realm of such serious academic discourse. Still, however, it remains relegated to the sidelines of academia, much like feminist critical theory was in universities prior to the 1970s. Critical animal studies have yet to attract a great deal of attention on an institutional level, although the signs are that there is progress being made in this direction. Still, few universities have faculty who work in this area as a mainstay of their research, and given the pressing need for such research, and the shortage of “experts” to supervise it, we both decided that my lifelong interest in the issues involved and the ideals of animal advocacy made me as good a choice of supervisor as any. Perhaps unorthodox and less than ideal in some ways, the arrangement seemed to work well for both of us, and Micol went on to create a tour de force ethical manifesto which utilized both her considerable writing talents and her astonishing and deeply moving work as a visual artist. Rather than simply researching and compiling data, Micol’s work generates new knowledge and new ways of knowing, which are certainly going to be vital to our own human well-being if we hope to adapt to the changing realities of life on a planet Earth that simply cannot sustain us in the fashion to which we have become accustomed. Since our work together, Micol has continued to be a vocal proponent of the need to change violent practices to which we have become numb and willfully blind, and this book is a reflection of her ongoing dedication to and passion for that purpose. I was thrilled to hear that this book was being published, and I was very pleased and honoured to be asked to write this foreword.