Two Points to Dunayer
26 November 2006

I offer two brief points in response to Dunayer’s point-by-point to me. I should say upfront that I’ll offer only two brief points, mostly because — given Dunayer’s response — I don’t really see any productive end in a continued discourse. My points remain, and I think they stand on their own merit. Dunayer seems to think this debate revolves around a difference of opinion; on the contrary, the debate as I cast it revolves around what looks to me like poor scholarly practices, or at the very least, a heavy dose of bad faith towards the theorists with which one disagrees, or from which one is trying to distance oneself for whatever reason (presumably, in this case, to colonize a branch of theory without the requisite innovation). At the very least Dunayer does a selective reading of Francione. Were this kind of reading turned in to me as a peer reviewer for a scholarly book or journal — work which I do fairly often — I’d critique it in exactly the same way.

But that said, I’ll offer my two points and step out.

1. Dunayer seems confused about what an apologetic is, and she seems to insist that it requires apology. Of course, one form of an apologetic is to express regret; the sense in which I use it, however, comes from the scholarly fields of philosophy and theology, and is meant to imply an impassioned defense of a theory — which, presumably, is what Dunayer is at least trying to engage in. Even the cheap online dictionary that comes with Mac OS X recognizes this usage with the following definition:

“of the nature of a formal defense or justification of something such as a theory or religious doctrine.”

2. Dunayer concludes her piece with this sentence:

“In my view, you’re simply denying the existence of a legitimate abolitionist theory different from Francione’s.”

I’m curious about this “legitimate abolitionist theory” and I’d like to know where I could read it. I ask only because what I’ve read in Speciesism is very much like what Francione writes, with some added weak criticism. Advancing criticism of an existing author does not make a theoretical frame; criticism can be the foundation of a theoretical frame, a first step, but it is never complete without advancing one’s own developments. I know from her arguments that Dunayer thinks she is doing this, but the “advancements” in Speciesism seem too minor and too much like Francione to count as original in my mind. In sum, if such a “legitimate abolitionist theory” exists as a fully developed theoretical frame, I’d love to see it, cite it, and work with it in dialogue in my own work.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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