Radial Animal Studies: Beyond Respectability Politics, Opportunism, and Cooptation is a scholar-activist book emerging out of the field of Critical Animal Studies (CAS). Radical Animal Studies (RAS) edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and Kim Socha recognizes and values the goal of total liberation and the importance of underground revolutionary direct action. RAS is a complement to, not in conflict with, CAS. Indeed, RAS is dedicated to two of the 10 CAS principles: seven (total liberation) and nine (radical politics and (...) strategies). This book is an essential read for social justice community organizers, animal liberation activists, and intersectional total liberation scholars. (shrink)

This volume broadens animal liberation dialogues by offering the arguments, challenges, inspiration and narratives of grassroots activists. The essays show what animal advocacy looks like from a collective of individuals living in and around Minnesota's Twin Cities; the essayists, however, write of issues, both personal and political, that resound on a global scale"--Provided by publisher.

This interdisciplinary study fuses analysis of feminist literature and manifestos, radical political theory, critical vanguard studies, women's performance art, and popular culture to argue for the animal liberation movement as successor to the liberationist visions of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes, most especially the Surrealists. These vanguard groups are judiciously critiqued for their refusal to confront their own misogyny, a quandary that continues to plague animal activists, thereby disallowing for cohesion and full recognition of women's value within a culturally marginalized cause. (...) This volume is of interest to anyone who is concerned about the continued--indeed, escalating--violence against nonhumans. More broadly, it will interest those seeking new pathways to challenge the dominant power constructions through which oppression of humans, nonhumans, and the environment thrives. Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde ultimately poses the animal liberation movement as having serious political and cultural implications for radical social change, destruction of hierarchy and for a world without shackles and cages, much as the Surrealists envisioned. (shrink)