Sanctuaries and the Politics of Refusal

Talk Description: Animal sanctuaries play a crucial role in the struggle for animal liberation and multispecies social justice. Not only do they provide exciting possibilities for the development of new kinds of relationships and communities with other animals, but they also continue the tradition of Great Refusal as envisioned by public intellectual and leading figure of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse. Sanctuaries are incredibly diverse and deeply flawed institutions. They vary greatly depending on the types of animals they house, the forms of violence the animals have been subjected to prior to their arrival, the resources available, and the vision of the sanctuary founders, among other things. Moreover, animals in sanctuaries are still captive and are still considered property under the law. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, sanctuaries share a unique commitment to prioritizing other animals’ wellbeing and flourishing, and to creating environments where animals can live in relative comfort and peace, in the midst of a raging war against them. Speaker:Zipporah Weisberg is an adjunct professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies and the Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts at the University of Ottawa. Previously, Zipporah held a limited-term appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor of Critical Animal Studies at Brock University, was awarded a Culture and Animals Foundation grant for her project on animal agency in animal sanctuaries, and served as the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University. Her areas of specialization include critical animal studies, the critical theory of the early Frankfurt School, and existentialism and phenomenology. Zipporah has published on a wide range of topics, and is currently working on a book project on sanctuaries as a form of political refusal.