A Feeling for the Language

Abstract

The author proposes that animal experimentation is one part of a master narrative involving presumptions about Western medical care, knowledge acquisition, and the object status of nonhuman animals. Drawing on Cohn’s analysis of the language of nuclear defense, the author applies her insights to Dunayer’s path-breaking work on speciesist language. She identifies profound connections between Cohn’s and Dunayer’s analyses, specifically “take the high ground and hold it,”“the disappearance of the victim,” and “squeeze out all available space for feeling.” The author sketches some of these connections and concludes by suggesting some of the ecofeminist implications of Dunayer’s work, specifically ecofeminism’s critique of dualistic cultural constructions that, for instance, oppose emotion to rationality. Coining the term pathophobia—the refusal to feel and thus the refusal to engage with the suffering of animals—the author suggests why master narratives will always be pathophobic.