CAS Event on Friday: Liberalism Cannot Save Us: Multispecies Justice, Ongoing Colonialism, and Decolonization in Malaysia and South Africa
Friday, April 26 at 4pm
Hale 230
Research lecture by Dr. Juno Salazar Parreñas, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, The Ohio State University
Articulations of human rights and animal rights have insufficiently engaged the dire challenges of biodiversity loss, species extinction, and climate change. Instead of situating environmentalism and animal advocacy in the language of liberalism through rights-bearing citizens and wards, I argue for a broader sense of justice, one that recognizes the shared plight of human and animal subjects while also critiquing the material conditions of ongoing colonialism. In this talk, I draw from ethnographic research in Sarawak (present-day Malaysia) and preliminary research in South Africa to compare the welfare of displaced orangutans on Borneo, ex-circus lions in southern Africa, and the people who work to enable the survival of such critically endangered and vulnerable lives.
