MAVE Dissertation,
Lancaster University 2001

Incorporating the Other:Val Plumwood’s Integration of Ethical Frameworks

David Eaton

Supervisor: Clare Palmer

A dualism is more than a relation of dichotomy, difference, or non-identity, and more than a simple hierarchical relationship. In dualistic construction, as in hierarchy, the qualities (actual or supposed), the culture, the values and the areas of life associated with the dualised other are systematically and pervasively constructed and depicted as inferior. Hierarchies, however, can be seen as open to change, as contingent and shifting. But once the process of domination forms culture and constructs identity, the inferiorised group (unless it can marshall cultural resources for resistance) must internalise this inferiorisation in its identity and collude in this low valuation, honouring the values of the centre, which form the dominant social values.

				Val Plumwood*

Contents:

3	Val Plumwood and Carol J. Adams – Background to the Discussion
4	Adams’ Theory: Ethnocentric Grand Narrative or Culturally Situated Tactic:
		Refuting Charges of Universalism
8		Culturally Situated Tactics and Consciousness Raising
11	Clarification of Meanings:
		“Ontologizing”
12		“Contextualizing”
13		“Alienation”
15	Nature, Culture and Food
20	Ethical Dualism and the Plant-Animal Boundary
22	Disgust
24	Conclusion
26	Bibliography

Val Plumwood and Carol J. Adams
- Background to the Discussion

	The purpose of the following is to explore and hopefully illuminate an academic debate between the ideas of two ecofeminist writers around the issue of the appropriate theoretical basis from which to improve our interactions (and particularly our food relationships) with nonhuman animals. Carol Adams has, over several books and essays, developed an analysis of animal exploitation that ties this particular form of domination to the exploitation of women in developed western societies. She argues that these two forms of domination are inextricably linked under patriarchal social structures. In this, her analysis appears at first to concur with the assertions of Val Plumwood, in her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, that patriarchal thought is structured around a series of mutually reinforcing dualisms, including male/female, human/nonhuman and culture/nature, and that these dualisms, forming what she calls “a system, an interlocking structure”, provide the conceptual scheme against which human male privilege is established. Plumwood, however, recently published a paper which was highly critical of Adams’ stance, particularly her espousal of what Plumwood calls “ontological vegetarianism” or “ontological veganism”, and which proposed a different framework within which to envisage an improved human-nonhuman relationship, most specifically around the issue of the moral legitimacy of using animals as food. In this paper Plumwood accuses Adams of, amongst other things, universalising a perspective rooted in western alienation from nature, and therefore of an offensive cultural imperialism which ignores the social, economic and ecological realities of life for people living in unprivileged, non-western situations. This critique unfolds within the laying out of a theory in which humans must recognize that all beings, themselves included, are potential food for others, but that claims to resist (at the conceptual and practical levels) the excesses of instrumental use and the accompanying denial mechanisms about animal suffering which arise in the context of economically rationalised corpse production and commodification in developed societies.
	Plumwood’s theory achieves a fairly convincing synthesis of concern for animals, environment and the integrity of non-western social and ecological relationships. It is a more ambitious and philosophically coherent theory than that which Adams puts forward. It is troubling, however, that Plumwood’s critique of Adams seems to represent Adams’ ideas in a way which is little recognisable from Adams’ own writing. They both approach the issue of human relationships with nonhumans from different directions, and can therefore be expected to have differing concerns, to suggest different solutions. Plumwood’s direct attack on Adams’ position, however, is unexpectedly aggressive, and my reading of Adams’ work has lead me to believe that Plumwood actually misrepresents Adams’ thinking on a number of points. In addition, Plumwood does not consider some important issues arising from Adams’ work that offer an implicit critique of her theory. 
	In what follows, I hope to offer a fairly close textual comparison of the writings of Plumwood and Adams in order to clarify the points of dispute. This will involve investigating Plumwood’s charges of universalism, ethnocentrism, lack of contextualization, “alienation” (a problematic term that is used rather indiscriminately by Plumwood), dualistic thinking and ecological insensitivity. I will attempt to show that Adams is not nearly as guilty of these charges as Plumwood alleges, and that many uncomfortable questions are raised by Plumwood’s critique.
	Central to my argument will be the claim that Adams’ vegetarian theory is not presented as a universally applicable theory. Plumwood asserts consistently that Adams’ presents her ideas as culturally universal, and this is the root of several of the charges mentioned above. I will attempt to show not only that Adams explicitly states the specific cultural context that she is concerned with, but that this is also quite clearly implicit in the majority of her analyses. A related major point of misunderstanding between Plumwood and Adams arises in Adams’ suggestion that animals should not be “ontologised” as edible. Plumwood takes this to be the assertion of a universal philosophical truth, and proceeds to demolish it as such. I will attempt to show that this suggestion is presented by Adams more as a culturally situated tactic to resist the hegemonic discourse of “meat” as an inevitable component of the human diet – a discourse that assists in the psychological avoidance of full knowledge of what “meat” entails. This whole issue is vital to understanding Plumwood’s charge that Adams’ theory is offensively ethnocentric and culturally hegemonic.
	I will also attempt to clarify the way in which concepts such as “ontologizing”, “contextualizing” and “alienation” may be interpreted to mean different things with reference to the writing of Plumwood and Adams. These are very important terms for this debate, but carry baggage with different internal distributions of weight for each theorist. Another important area of misunderstanding is the relationship between nature and culture: Plumwood considers that “ontological vegetarians” envisage this relationship dualistically whereas I hope to show that this is not the case. Plumwood attempts to highlight the presence of another dualistic conceptualisation (the plant-animal boundary) in Adams’ theory and I will claim that this is a simplistic analysis which arises from overly abstract philosophising, and resists embodied knowledge of the way the world is structured.
	My analysis will lay some strong accusations at Plumwood’s door, and it is unfortunate that they arise in response to a theory which in many respects is visionary. My problem lies not with the constructive proposals for integrated thinking that Plumwood makes, but with the way in which Adams’ voice is distorted by this account. There are important factors, however, emdedded in Plumwood’s thinking, which suggest reasons for this attack. I will attempt to draw these out as the analysis progresses. 

Adams’ Theory: Ethnocentric Grand Narrative or
Situated Tactic?

Refuting Charges of Universalism

	The most damaging attack that Plumwood makes on Adams’ theory is to claim that it is presented as culturally universal and that Adams’ injunction against ontologizing animals as edible is intended to apply to all humans, including indigenous peoples who may depend on the consumption of animal food in order to obtain an adequate diet. Plumwood therefore sees no problem in labelling Adams’ work as “ethnocentric”. It is true that Adams is occasionally careless about specifying a particular context for assertions, but reading her work as a whole makes it clear that she is addressing herself to a specific culture, and that her claims are not intended to be interpreted as universal truths, or as the creation of a philosophical grand narrative about humans and their proper relation to animals and nature. Plumwood’s ambitions appear to lie in this direction and, as I will suggest later, this may be one dynamic underlying her critique of Adams. In this section I will explore the charge of universalism that Plumwood makes, and demonstrate that this is founded on a biased reading of Adams’ work.
	Plumwood claims that “Although Adams’s account focuses almost entirely on the contemporary west, it is presented as culturally universal, an account of inevitable and timeless ethical features of human predation”. In much of Adams’ work it is clear that her account is culturally specific. Problems may arise, however, when the cultural context she refers to is not explicitly apparent, but is assumed by her to be implicitly understood and is therefore not clearly stated. In such cases, it may be necessary to review the surrounding discussion in order to clarify whether Adams is making universal claims or not. Plumwood quotes very little material directly from Adams in order to support the charges she makes, however the following two examples are illustrative. Plumwood writes that:

The need for contextualization in terms of ecological, social and cultural context is explicitly rejected by Adams in her claims that all humans are equally positioned with respect to the need for animal food. Thus she claims that “humans have the choice whether to eat animals or not” (Adams 1993, 206). This claim, which is crucial to the ethical case, is made about humans in a completely generalized and unmodified form, although it is clear that not all humans do have this choice.

I have been unable to find an example of Adams explicitly claiming that all humans are equally positioned with respect to the need for animal food, although it is true that her arguments only occasionally address themselves to the positioning of those who rely on its consumption. However, the passage Plumwood quotes above is located within an argument that feminist conferences should not serve “meat” to delegates. This is the context of the quotation – a fact that Plumwood fails to mention when making that quotation, and that is directly relevant to understanding it. Although Adams does not specify at this point that the humans she refers to are not to include ones who are currently situated in an ecological niche which requires them to eat animal flesh, it seems unlikely that a conference would actually occur in such a situation. The words immediately following those that Plumwood quotes make the context of Adams’ words more apparent: “Humans have a choice whether to eat animals or not. Choosing to purchase flesh at a supermarket or have it served at a conference represents human agency”. 
	Plumwood goes on to claim that 

Adams appears to believe that eating animal food is as inessential in all cultural and ethnic contexts as she takes it to be in her own. Explicitly rejecting any exceptions to her strictures against animal use for nondominant cultures, Adams states “We [feminists] do not embrace nondominant cultural traditions that, for instance, oppress women”.

Adams’ discussion of whether feminist conferences should be vegetarian does include statements that, taken out of context, may problematise my argument that her claims are not universal claims. It is important to look closely at these, as with the passage Plumwood refers to:

The position that feminist conferences (and theory) should be pluralistic also is seen to be at odds with any universal claim for vegetarianism. Imposing one’s dietary decision on all races or ethnic groups is viewed as racist, because the inability to exercise personal food choices severs an individual from her racial/ethnic tradition. I deeply respect the need to preserve nondominant cultures. However, I do not believe that pluralism requires siding with human-skin privilege in order to avoid white-skin privilege. We do not embrace nondominant cultural traditions that, for instance, oppress women. An unspoken “in-order-to” is buried in this assumption: We want feminism to be pluralistic; in order for this to be, we must be species exclusive in our theory.

	The use of the word “universal” in this extract is at first worrying, however the purpose of the passage from which it is taken is primarily to illustrate the means by which the desire for pluralism can become co-opted as a tactic to ensure that the issue of whether an individual should eat animal flesh is maintained as a matter of unproblematic personal preference in a way that would not be tolerated were it a human justice issue. As Adams says, “Conventional wisdom implies that for the one issue to prevail, the other must be kept in the realm of discursive privacy”. Adams’ intention is to destabilize this assumption by asserting the direct relevance of vegetarianism to the feminist aim of resisting diverse forms of oppression, illustrating that to serve “meat” at conferences represents short-sighted complicity in dominating structures. The paradoxical nature of the claim for pluralism then becomes apparent: “pluralism becomes a boundary enforcer rather than a boundary destabilizer”. Adams goes on to contextualise her analysis in a way which is ignored by Plumwood:

Through reprivatization, a universal vegetarianism is seen as a white woman’s imposing her “dietary” concerns on women of color. However, since I am arguing on behalf of vegetarian feminist conferences, let us agree that at present the foods offered at most conferences represent the dominant culture. They already ignore ethnic and racial traditions around food.

The line that Adams treads in this discussion does occasionally appear rather fine, however this is the closest that she comes to directly espousing a universal vegetarianism, and to take her comments completely out of context, as Plumwood does, is to misrepresent what she actually claims. Adams continues that “In addressing the right of racial and ethnic groups to eat animals, we are not talking about food as nutrition but food as ritual”. This sentence does not suggest that we could never be talking about food as nutrition, but that within the bounds of a discussion about the meals provided at conferences, exemplary nutrition could be provided without recourse to animal flesh. The implicit subtext of these words, contrary to what Plumwood suggests, is that where adequate nutrition does require the eating of animals, then it would be regrettable but not subject to ethical condemnation.
	Other assertions by Plumwood are worth looking closely at, for example the following:

Adams fails to distinguish between the concept of “meat” – a culturally specific construction which as she shows involves high levels of commodification, homogenisation, reduction, denial of kinship, and hyperseparation – and other possible constructions of animals as edible food that do not have these features. The term “meat” is used equivocally, and is ambiguous between being animal food (edible), conceived in this culturally specific way as meat, and also as a cultural generic term for any kind of animal food.

Here Plumwood seems to believe that the analyses Adams puts forward of the way that western culture constructs “meat” are intended to be applicable to all eating of animal flesh. Plumwood gives no quotations or references in support of this interpretation. The only case that could be made for her assertion being true, in the absence of any direct textual evidence that Adams uses the term “meat” in this way, would be to argue that by not clearly making the distinction that Plumwood identifies, Adams is implicitly intending her culturally situated analysis to be extended universally. However, the following passages from Adams’ work show a careful distinguishing between “meat” that is produced in contemporary western contexts and that which is not:

Another example of the flight from specificity occurs when the term “meat eating” is applied transhistorically, transculturally, implying that the means by which “meat” is obtained have not changed so much that different terms are needed, or else that the changes in the means of production are immaterial to a discussion…. Those aspects unidentified or misidentified are then presumed to be unproblematic or inconsequential.

Or, to give a further example:

[Pat] Parker’s supper of meat is not the same meat as that consumed by her ancestors, though they are classified as such. The meat she is eating comes from a commodity, capitalist world in which the fourth stage of meat eating has influenced the production of meat. Contemporary meat production methods create an extreme difference between second and third stage meat eating, which Parker’s ancestors would have known.

These passages could perhaps be argued to have a vague ethnocentric bias because (apart from the significant inclusion of the word “transculturally”) they appear to be most specifically concerned with the historical development of meat eating in the west. However, this is the stated context about which Adams is writing, and the distinctions that she draws here quite clearly show that her understanding of the “culturally specific construction” of “meat” is in no way intended to be universalised. One further long quotation should serve to decisively refute Plumwood’s charges of crude universalising; I will then explore in more depth the reasons why Adams’ culturally situated theory is perhaps more appropriate than the kind of grand narrative that Plumwood accuses her of creating, and attempts to create herself:

My argument about not using animals may be heard as one of ideological purity. But it is not that. The instrumental view of animals that concerns me arises within Western developed culture, in which a discourse of otherness has been used to maintain dominance. My critique is aimed at that dominance. The Cartesian dualism of human/animal, soul/body that inscribes animals as useable is not a legacy of most native peoples. Conversations with native peoples will be different because the ontological positioning of animals in their cultures is different. It is not my goal to condemn the diet of the Inuit, nor weigh in against the fishing rights struggles of native people in North America.

Culturally Situated Tactics & Consciousness Raising

	It should now be apparent that Adams’ theory, which Plumwood claims to be “presented as culturally universal, an account of inevitable and timeless ethical features of human predation” is in fact presented as what it is: a detailed focus on one particularly abusive cultural context. Adams makes the claim that the abuses of animals carried out in the contemporary western “meat” industry are a result of ontologising them as edible, and that the appropriate way to resist the abuses is to resist the ontology that underlies it. This is the element of her thinking that is most incompatible with Plumwood’s, since Plumwood bases her theory on the idea that all living beings can, and indeed should, legitimately be ontologised as edible for other beings, including humans. (Although Plumwood does not suggest that humans should eat other humans, it is important to the coherence of her approach that humans are placed within the same moral framework as other animals, and this necessitates their conceptualisation as prey for others in ecological processes). 
The incompatibility of the two theories is inevitably bound up with the difference of focus. Adams’ work tends to home in tightly on the specific mechanisms operating within western society that help to maintain an oppressive system. Consequently she engages directly with these mechanisms in offering solutions.  Plumwood’s theory is very much attuned to recognising problems caused by western alienation from what she calls “ecological embodiment”, but the solutions that she suggests are orientated towards attempting to resolve matters within a conceptual scheme that is applicable to both western and non-western cultural contexts. She cannot endorse a solution that suggests that people living in the developed western world should “ontologise” animals differently to those who live in more intimate relations with the natural world, despite the structural differences in the experiences of both humans and food animals in these different contexts. To suggest this would appear to endorse the lack of intimacy in the western human/nature relationship, as well as to participate in dualistic conceptualisation. In what follows I will examine Adams’ thinking in order to clarify why her focus on the western context, and on solutions that are specific to that context, may be appropriate.
	Adams introduces her book Neither Man Nor Beast with these words: “Issues I raise in the following pages are not meant to be a systematic laying out of a grand theory, but rather are suggestive of the issues that need to be addressed”. The distinction she makes is informative: it may be difficult to engage productively with the full range of issues western institutional animal abuse raises if they must be fitted into the format of an overarching “ethic” or philosophical theory. Such a theory necessarily relies on a good degree of abstraction, which may be incompatible with a flexible appreciation of the way cultural systems work in practice. This is a criticism that several ecofeminists have made of traditional animal liberation theories such as the rights and utilitarian frameworks proposed by Tom Regan and Peter Singer. Adams’ approach enables her to concentrate on features specific to her own cultural context and to retain flexibility in the interpretation of social phenomena. This is a distinctive feature of ecofeminist thought, as identified by Karen Warren:

Like all theory, a feminist ethic is based on some generalizations. Nevertheless, the generalizations associated with it are themselves a pattern of voices within which the different voices emerging out of concrete and alternative descriptions of ethical situations have meaning. The coherence of a feminist theory so conceived is given within a historical and conceptual context, i.e., within a set of historical, socio-economic circumstances (including circumstances of race, class, age, and affectional orientation) and within a set of basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions about the world.

	Adams’ focus on the cultural situation she is familiar with ensures that her theory is grounded in her own experience of the context that she writes about. She also incorporates into her writing an awareness of the functional directedness of her theory within this situation. As she puts it, “Perhaps our greatest challenge is to raise the consciousness of those around us to see the institutional violence of eating animals as an ethical issue”. This is clearly one of Adams’ primary aims: to raise the consciousness of those whose complicity in the economic viability of the “meat” industry ensures its continuation. It is therefore fair to say that her theory has a polemical purpose. Whereas Plumwood attempts to formulate a philosophically coherent system, Adams’ lack of this ambition allows her to more directly address issues that are likely to bring about the “critical consciousness” that she identifies as a necessary factor in the development of social change. Lori Gruen suggests that the form that theory takes is vital to its wider communicative potential: “Most people are shielded from the consequences of their actions. As long as the theories that advocate the liberation of animals rely on abstraction, the full force of these consequences will remain too far removed to motivate a change in attitude”. 
A comparison at this point with Plumwood’s thinking might be useful in balancing the different approaches. Aiming for a universal approach, Plumwood claims that “Animal defence stands in need of a less polarising and more politically radicalising theory of ethical eating with potentially wide appeal that can form part of the practice of progressive and aware people in a wide variety of global contexts, not just saints and seminarians in limited enclaves of privilege in urban North America”. However, there are possible consequences of aiming for a single theory that is applicable to “a wide variety of global contexts”. One is that it may be less sensitive to context than a theory that arises within, and addresses itself specifically to, a particular culture. This is why Warren likens the “generalizations” associated with feminist theory to a pattern of “different voices emerging out of concrete and alternative descriptions of ethical situations”. Each voice has its own truth, which arises from embedded knowledge. As she claims, feminist theory “rejects the assumption that there is “one voice” in terms of which ethical values, beliefs, attitudes, and conduct can be assessed”. Although the aim of Plumwood’s theory is to be “integrated”, it works on the assumption that it has the potential to become “one voice”, and expresses the darker implications of this in its inability to tolerate difference, as represented by Adams’ structurally incompatible approach. What is significant is not that Plumwood disagrees with Adams, but that rather than considering the relevance of Adams’ thinking within the discursive space that it stakes out for itself, Plumwood makes false claims of universalism for her and then attempts to discredit her work on these grounds. In addition, because Plumwood’s theory relies on abstractions such as humans conceptualising themselves as potential food for others, it may risk lacking communicative relevance to the lives of the supermarket shoppers and butcher’s shop “patrons” who support the bulk of the abusive western “meat” industry, and who Adams is writing about and to.  
The relationship between Adams’ aims and Plumwoods criticism of her work is complicated by misunderstandings over the application of two key terms, “ontologizing” and “contextualizing”. I will now attempt to clarify this misunderstanding, and then to explore what Plumwood might mean when she labels Adams’ theory “alienated”.

Clarification of Meanings

“Ontologizing”

	It is impossible to fully grasp Plumwood’s criticism of Adams without understanding the importance of her particular interpretation of Adams’ claim that the “ontologizing” of animals as edible should be resisted. Plumwood interprets this as the statement of a philosophically absolute position, rather than as what I have identified it as – a culturally situated tactic. I will now attempt to clarify exactly what Adams does mean by her emphasis on “ontologizing”; it should then become evident why Plumwood’s interpretation is misguided.
Adams does not merely oppose factory farming: her espousal of vegetarianism goes deeper than that, as is apparent when she claims that “I see the problem as the ontologizing of animals as edible, not any single practice of producing flesh foods”. Her celebration of historical vegetarianism in The Sexual Politics of Meat looks back to a period long before factory farming methods were even a glint in capitalism’s eye. But this does not make her claim that we should not ontologize animals as edible into a universal claim. Rather, it is a claim specifically tailored to countering the western conceptual view of animals that finds its purest and worst expression in the factory farming system. She describes a western view of animals as inherently inferior to humans and therefore as totally instrumentalisable and identifies this as the dominant “ontology” of animals in western culture. Factory farming is then seen by her as the unavoidable consequence of this ontology:

The current ontology requires that we acquiesce to the hierarchical structure that places humans above animals and defines “human” and “animal” antithetically. The current ontology continues to subordinate nonhuman nature – in this case, the other animals – to people’s whims. Intensive factory farming is inevitable in a flesh-advocating, capitalist culture. It has become the only way to maintain and meet the demand for flesh products that currently exists and must be seen as the logical outcome of this ontology. (Italics Adams’)

Adams’ point, then, is that factory farming serves to expose the western ontology of animals as the problem, by growing inevitably from this ontology and explicitly giving it expression. Adams goes on to describe the way that the ontology of animals as usable, and as edible, cannot be split off from the aspect of western identity that positions “us” as a society of “meat” eaters:

It may seem to be a tautology to say that if we believe some other beings are 
meant to be our flesh (the appropriate victims) then we are meant to be corpse eaters. Conversely, if we are meant to be corpse eaters then we also believe that someone else is meant to die to be our “meat.” These are interlocking givens, ontologies that become self-perpetuating and breed passivity. Either no problem exists; it is unchangeable; or it is changeable, but simply too difficult to do so.

Adams refuses to accept this situation, and insists that it is changeable, by changing the “ontology” of animals that underlies it. This is crucial to understanding Adams’ approach.  

“Contextualizing”

	I would now like to contrast this understanding of Adams’ theory with Plumwood’s charge of poor contextualization. Plumwood quite correctly points out that Adams theory is badly suited to non-western, non-privileged contexts. It is only by refusing to acknowledge that it is not intended to suit those contexts that she is able to make her allegation that it is badly “contextualized”. Consider the following passage:

Although contextual vegetarianisms that are more sensitive to cultural difference are clearly possible, ontological veganism stands firmly on universalising a North-American perspective. If vegetarian theorists have available the alternative possibility of a well contextualized ethical theory, why do they choose to develop and support a culturally insensitive and universalist one.

There appears to be some confusion arising here about what actually constitutes contextualization. Within Plumwood’s theory good contextualization appears to imply the creation of a single universal narrative that is capable of being fitted to “a wide variety of global contexts”. This would include considering whether the theory “works” in these diverse contexts in a way which does not impinge unfairly on the lives and cultures of indigenous others. It would then be “culturally sensitive” by being applicable transculturally. This is the type of theory that Plumwood attempts to develop herself. As established, however, what Adams has done is to create a theory that is embedded within one specific cultural context and is not intended to be applied in a wider sense. Plumwood’s charge that Adams’ work is badly contextualized is therefore totally misconceived; it is her own theory that is “universalist” and that risks being only dubiously “culturally sensitive” to the western context by attempting to resolve the problems of human dominance with abstract symbolic gestures such as claiming that “we can reposition ourselves back in the food chain, acknowledge our own edibility, and start our project of recognizing kinship from there”. Suggestions such as this will mean almost nothing to the average urban westerner.
	Plumwood confidently asserts that “Although ecofeminist theory has tended to stress contextual ethics (Warren 1990), existing cultural ecofeminist ontological vegan theories have not lived up to these commitments”. This citation of Warren is rather ironic, however, as Adams’ situated voice fits more comfortably into Warren’s pluralistic vision (which “rejects the assumption that there is “one voice”” ) than Plumwood’s universal and totalising grand narrative. 

 “Alienation”

	The word “alienation” is hugely important in Plumwood’s work, both in her critique of Adams and in other writings. This term is intimately linked to Plumwood’s analysis of the functioning of dualisms in western thought. In Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, dualistic thinking is related to domination and repression of the “other”, and is considered inherently “alienated” primarily because it constructs reality, and difference, in a reductive way. This is apparent in Plumwood’s assertion that “Dualism can also be seen as an alienated form of differentiation, in which power construes and constructs difference in terms of an inferior and alien realm”.  The word is also used by Plumwood in other contexts. The exact form, conditions and manifestation of the “alienation” are often not fully explored however, and the term may, ironically, appear to function in various ways to express Plumwood’s dissatisfaction with a structure of ideas or material conditions. I would like now to discuss the charge that “ontological” vegetarianism is “alienated”, and to consider the way that this charge functions as a delegitimating or muting device.
	There appear to be three principal senses in which Plumwood intends that Adams’ theory be considered “alienated”. The first is by including elements of dualistic thinking: “ontological veganism colludes with the dualism of the western tradition”. I will discuss later the charge that Adams’ theory is dualistic, and dispute this claim. The other two senses are perhaps combined in the charge of alienation from “ecological embodiment”. The first of these two involves an alienation from involvement in ecological processes. Plumwood draws a contrast between the “dualistic versus alienated alternatives of unconstrained use versus the alienated “outside the ecosystem” alternative of avoidance of all use”. This kind of alienation, an alienation from direct participation in food chains that is perhaps presumed to accompany the western “hyperseparation” from nature, is inevitably to some extent illusory. This point is made explicitly by Plumwood herself when she invokes “the fundamental ecological insight that culture is embedded in ecological systems and dependent on nature”. It also suggests that the existence of herbivorous humans and the freeing of animals from human consumption is somehow intended to put either humans or animals “outside the ecosystem”. This element of Plumwood’s analysis is based on a selective and flawed extrapolation of the symbolic significance of “ontological vegetarianism” from the realm where it has meaning to an abstract level where it is more easily pathologised.
	The final sense in which Plumwood intends Adams’ thinking to be seen as alienated functions more aggressively to undermine its perceived legitimacy. Plumwood suggests that “Alienated ontological vegetarian forms draw on our traditional western alienation from embodiment”. This is a powerful criticism to make, but it is a charge that is very poorly supported by argument. Plumwood resorts to suggesting links with other supposedly tainted philosophical positions in a way that smacks of “guilt by association”. She claims that “Historically, ontological vegetarianism has often kept company with alienated worldviews which reject earthly life and construe embodiment as a corrupt and tragic condition, for example in Manicheism, Gnosticism, Pythagoreanism, and Catharism”. The main supporting evidence that Plumwood finds linking Adams’ thought to this rejection of embodiment is the tendency for “ontological” vegetarians to refer to “meat” eating in “terms calculated to horrify, revolt, and disgust”. I will examine this tendency in a later section, and will dispute the claim that it is a result of alienation from embodiment. 
The two unstated assumptions that Plumwood’s charge appears to depend on are that embodied beings (or embodied human beings) universally desire to eat animal flesh, and that to not occasionally accede to that desire represents a profound and pathological act of self-denial. These assumptions inevitably draw on the same discourse of flesh eating as “natural” and “inevitable” that helps to legitimate “meat”. They are also blind to the very real fact that many people do not actually want to eat “meat” (or any other construction of animal flesh). Adams describes how assumptions such as Plumwood’s work:

Both feminists and vegetarians are accused of negativity because they appear to require that something be given up (the most obvious trappings of femininity; the meat on the plate) as opposed to their own perspective in which they are emphasizing the positive choice (aspiring to emancipation and liberation; choosing vegetables, grains, and fruits). Who is a feminist or a vegetarian becomes a vexed question and the principles behind feminism and vegetarianism are transformed into “being moralistic.”

The assumption of ascetic self-denial refuses to acknowledge that thinking through and truly caring about the consequences of one’s actions, for “embodied” beings, usually has a direct effect on the desirability of specific actions. This is presumably why Adams emphasizes “consciousness raising” rather than abstract ethical injunctions. It is worth considering Adams’ description of how children may be initially resistant to the idea of eating “meat”:

Children, fresh observers of the dominant culture, raise issues about meat eating using a literal viewpoint. One part of the socialization process to the dominant culture is the encouragement of children to view the death of animals for food as acceptable; to do so they must think symbolically rather than literally.

From Adams’ perspective the “natural” impulse is to psychologically connect up the “meat on the plate” to the implicitly denied life of the animal that it came from, and therefore to reject the “meat”. The socialization of a child may then actually involve alienating the child from this awareness by symbolic devices and acculturation to the dominant viewpoint using the various denial mechanisms that Adams identifies. The question of which desire comes first, the desire to eat animal flesh or the desire to preserve animal lives, is therefore rather difficult to resolve. 
	Plumwood’s accusation of alienation from embodiment, and its prerequisite assumption of normality and centrality for flesh eating, is not particularly helpful for this debate. Her sustained attempt to control the symbolic meaning of Adams’ work aligns itself unintentionally with dominant and problematic discourses and parallels many other time-honoured but unsound interpretations of the refusal to eat “meat”, such as the charge discussed by Adams that it is “phobic”:
	
The attempt to squeeze the meaning of a response to food into the term “phobic” when it might be cultural, symbolic, or political demonstrates the labelling impulse of the dominant culture seeking to control interpretation. When refusal to eat meat is labelled phobic the dominant society is enacting distortion; it cannot grant positive status to objections to eating animals… The perspective against which refusal to eat meat is judged is one that presumes meat eating is an appropriate activity. Thus the dominant perspective mutes the minority perspective, absorbing it within the dominant perspective by labelling it as individual and deviant.

The accusation of “alienation” functions in exactly this way in Plumwood’s discussion, and is repeated so often that it almost becomes a mantra. For such a central charge there should really be a much more considered argument than Plumwood attempts to provide. One of the lessons to be learned from the more overtly masculine discourses that have emerged in the animal rights / ecology debate is that biased interpretations of the symbolic meaning of the other’s point of view, created to discredit that point of view, are meaninglessly destructive and ultimately hollow. Ecofeminism, at its best, seems to envisage itself as a circumventing of this type of bluster. Plumwood’s attempt to extrapolate, absolutize and pathologize symbolic meanings denies the relevance of context for honestly understanding both the practical and symbolic aspects of Adams’ “ontological” vegetarian protest and celebration. I will now explore this claim in more detail, with reference to the contested relationships between nature, culture and food.

Nature, Culture and Food

 	A crucial contested area in this debate is the most appropriate way to understand the relationships between nature and culture in the making of food choices. Adams and Plumwood inevitably come at this from different angles. Plumwood draws a contrast between two narratives: the individual justice framework and the ecological framework of energy flow and exchange. Her attempt to integrate the two takes place on a largely symbolic and abstract level, and involves criticism of Adams because the suggestion that animals should not be ontologised as edible by western humans seems incompatible with the ecological framework. Plumwood criticises arguments situating western “meat” eating purely in culture, emphasising “the way our lives weave together and criss-cross narratives of culture and nature”. Adams, however, attempts to politicise western “meat” eating, identifying the discourse that claims it to be natural as part of the problem that needs to be overcome, and therefore inevitably comes into conflict with Plumwood. Her account, however, is more concerned with the practical, and tactical, use of discourses to maintain oppression than with philosophical abstraction. In this section I attempt to problematise Plumwood’s account of the symbolic implications of Adams’ thinking, and to reaffirm the relevance its situatedness.
Adams makes the following claim:

Any debate about the place of animals in human communities occurs within a cultural context and a cultural practice. Here ideology pre-exists and imposes itself on individual perceptions, so that what is actually a problem of consciousness – how we look at animals – is seen as an aspect of personal choice and is presented as a “natural” aspect of our lives as human beings. 

The purpose of this is to “politicise the natural” or refuse to accept the discourse that claims that the presence of animals as an oppressed group in human society is analogous to natural predation. This discourse is itself inevitably political, and invokes a kind of biological determinism to suggest that not eating animal flesh is in some way symptomatic of a less than fully adequate human existence. This way of appealing to the “natural” can be seen to be part of the network of denial mechanisms which enable confrontation with the misery forced on food animals to be conveniently avoided by western society. As Adams puts it, “Claiming that human consumption of the other animals is predation like that of carnivorous animals naturalizes this act… Instead it is an ongoing oppression enacted through the animal-industrial complex”.
	What is interesting at this point is the way that Adams’ analysis of how this discourse works intersects with Plumwood’s analysis of Adams’ theory, as well as her own proposals. Plumwood accuses the ontological vegetarian approach of “demonizing predation in an account which finds an easy way prepared for it along well-trodden western paths of alienation from ecological embodiment”. Again, Plumwood appears to have misunderstood what Adams is claiming. Adams is careful to clearly distinguish the predation of carnivorous animals from the use of food animals to provide “meat” (a “culturally specific construction”). Therefore there is no logical philosophical implication that Adams’ theory in any way “demonises predation”, and Adams certainly doesn’t make any suggestion that she wishes to censure carnivorous non-humans (or humans that cannot survive without animal food). Plumwood, however, is very insensitive to the subtleties of this situated analysis, ignoring Adams’ qualifying statements and attempting to extrapolate the possible implications of any one nuance to the assertion of a philosophical absolute. She writes that 

any attempt to condemn predation in completely general, ontological terms will inevitably rub off onto predatory animals (including both carnivorous and omnivorous animals), and any attempt to separate predation completely from human identity will also serve to reinforce once again the western tradition’s hyperseparation of our nature from that of animals.
   
Adams, of course, has attempted neither of these things; she has only separated predation from western “meat” eating. What is paradoxical about Plumwood’s analysis is that she herself distinguishes “between the concept of “meat”… and other possible constructions of animals as edible food”, but refuses to recognise such a distinction in Adams’ thought.
	A key to understanding Plumwood’s critique is suggested by her concern with western “hyperseparation” from nature. Her resistance to Adams’ thinking can be seen as resistance to a theory that accommodates, and deals with issues arising from, that separation without opposing it per se. For example, I believe that when Plumwood writes of “the alienation from ecological embodiment this position gives rise to”, it would perhaps be fairer and more accurate to have considered “the alienation from ecological embodiment that this position arises within and attempts to deal with the directly oppressive consequences of”. There is the potential here for a very interesting debate about what is the most appropriate level at which to attempt to redesign western society in order to achieve both species egalitarian and environmentally liberatory goals. Such a debate would have to encompass the necessity for theory to communicate on a wide scale. Plumwood’s analysis is arguably “deeper” than Adams’, but risks losing relevance in abstraction and the disembodied, objective stance that it attempts to take. Adams’ work, however, may contain the surface detail and connecting up of fragmented and submerged awarenesses that non-academics will engage with a little more readily, while not being in any way populist or reductive.
	This point can usefully be considered in relation to Plumwood’s emphasis on the importance of humans considering themselves as potential food for other animals. Plumwood is concerned that the “concept of human identity positions humans outside and above the food chain”, claiming that this is conceived as a matter of human “sanctity” and citing the following evidence: “Horror is the wormy corpse, vampires sucking, and sci-fi monsters trying to eat humans (Alien and Aliens). Horror and outrage usually greet the stories of other species eating live or dead humans, various levels of hysteria our nibbling by the leeches, sandflies, and mosquitoes”. The problem with Plumwood’s interpretation is that it has a very abstract engagement with the phenomena it describes. It finds a pathological vision of human sanctity in horror films, rather than the expression of an embodied and universal awareness that we are actually potential food, and that being killed and eaten by scary monsters is likely to be an undesirable experience for most individuals. As for being nibbled by insects, there are probably few people who have not been, and most simply do what they can to avoid it and get on with life. In addition, the western cultural taboo on humans eating other humans that Plumwood goes on to mention has many possible origins other than a vision of human sanctity, such as a desire to avoid disease transmission, or to preserve social cohesion. Plumwood’s abstraction of these cultural phenomena to a symbolic level that denies bodily awareness is not only unsuited to engaging popular support, but weakens the academic strength of her case. 
  	The assertion of human sanctity is a basis on which further crucial stages of Plumwood’s analysis depend. She goes on to make the following claim, which I would like to examine in some detail:

As a result of this hyper-separation, food as interpreted in such a human supremacist order of rational meritocracy could never be a sacramental means to share our embodiment, but must become instead a hyper-separated and degraded category with which we are unable to experience any form of identification. This conviction is one source of our domination and reduction of those whom we would make our food. But it is also a further source of the alienated ontological form of vegetarianism that sees de-dualizing as attempting to extend outwards to some nonhumans this “sanctity” aspect of what is imagined to be the human condition.

The idea that food has become a “degraded” category is interesting, although Plumwood’s understanding of how this may have come about seems reductive and overly convenient for the logical progression of her argument. She does not consider the implications of other factors affecting the cultural significance of food in western societies. If food is indeed degraded, it seems probable that this could have a lot to do with the lack of involvement most consumers have with the production of food. In most cases it is something purchased rather than something grown, harvested or gathered with one’s own time and energy. This time and energy is split off into work and leisure activities which assume greater symbolic importance, and where food intersects with these, such as in cooking a celebratory meal or visiting a favourite restaurant it is likely to be highly valued. The “degradation” of the symbolic importance of food can be seen to be to a considerable degree linked to the distancing of food production from people’s lives; the degradation and abuse of animal lives in the capitalist, commodified “meat” industry are, of course, inextricably tied to this distancing. Rather than what Plumwood calls “ontological” vegetarianism being “alienated” and about the extension of a symbolic “sanctity”, it can be seen instead as a stance motivated directly by a desire to reject the social acceptability of “meat” and a refusal to passively comply with the distancing, degradation and alienation associated with commodified “meat” consumption. Marti Kheel, who Plumwood identifies as another “ontological” vegetarian is therefore able to write
	
Since we live in a fragmented world, we will need to stretch our imaginations to put it back together again. It is often difficult for us to conceive of the impact that our personal conduct has beyond our individual lives. Reason is easily divided from emotion when our emotions are divided from experience… It is the details that we need to live moral lives, not obedience to abstract principles and rules.  
	
It is important to note that the “contextual” vegetarianism that Plumwood develops also espouses attention to details, and by questioning the appropriateness of the more abstract critical elements of Plumwood’s theory, I do not intend to query the constructive suggestions she makes. However, it is important to consider a further aspect of Plumwood’s linking of the “degradation” of food to “ontological” vegetarianism. Plumwood seems to have no awareness of the way that the process that Kheel describes can actually function to restore the “sacramental” aspect of eating in a commodified culture. The refusal to consider eating animal flesh may act to forge a deeper relationship between an individual and their diet, and therefore to counter some of the distancing effects imposed by a commodity culture. This is quite plainly apparent in Adams’ description of vegetarian food as “feeding on grace”, and exposes a fundamental inconsistency in Plumwood’s suggestion that “ontological” vegetarianism actually participates in the degraded conception of food. Consider the rhapsodical bond that Adams clearly has with her diet:

To destabilize patriarchal consumption, eat rice have faith in women. By doing so… we restore wholeness to our fragmented relationships with each other and the other animals. The question before us is, which images of the universe, of power, of animals, of ourselves, will we represent in our food? Of that which has preceded us, what shall remain? 

Plumwood seems to approve, in theory, of a “sacramental” connection with diet, but the particular “contextual” vegetarianism that she outlines actually offers little realistic scope for the kind of relationship to food that Adams so clearly enjoys for people living in commodified societies. This is apparent in her espousal of adventitious and occasional “meat” eating:

Adventitious use (scavenging) might include cases where you find road-kill in still-edible condition, where someone is about to throw away a ham sandwich in perfectly good condition, or the waiter brings the wrong dish… Occasional use includes the case where the normal diet excludes animal products, but fish (nonfarmed) is eaten every third Friday to be on the safe side or for specific health reasons.

Contrary to what would be expected from following Plumwood’s critique of “ontological vegetarianism” and her own emphasis on “sacred eating”, it seems that her practical dietary advice offers surprisingly little attention to spiritual sustenance. By making suggestions such as these Plumwood risks supporting the western discourse of “meat” as an integral part of the human diet, and of suggesting that a diet totally devoid of animal flesh may in some way be impoverished. This has implications for the resolve of potential abstainers, for the coherence of the case against “meat” and for an honest representation of the health issues for those not living in nutritionally marginal situations.
	Plumwood’s unwillingness to endorse a framework in which no animal food at all is eaten can be related to two factors. One of them, admirably, is a desire to avoid any implication of lack of solidarity with indigenous or non-western people who depend on animal food either for nutrition or for the maintenance of an ecologically sensitive and integrated lifestyle. Since Adams’ theory limits its scope to the western context, I have previously argued that she also avoids this implication. The second reason that I have been able to discern in Plumwood’s work is that she considers not eating any animal food to be about removing animals symbolically from ecological systems, labelling the “ontological” vegetarian position a “fantasy of extending to animals the master position outside the food chain”. This observation, however, depends on Plumwood’s previously discussed reluctance to acknowledge that “ontological” vegetarians do not censure predatory animals or unprivileged humans. Her symbolic interpretation is also dubiously relevant to the western context, where the alignment with the discourse of “meat” as natural or inevitable that “adventitious” or “occasional” use represents is likely to outweigh any symbolic connotations of embeddedness in ecological process. 
	The discussion I have attempted of the way Adams’ and Plumwood’s theories intersect at the blurred boundary of nature and culture is inevitably vulnerable. There are no absolutes here, except the practical realities of suffering. Both theorists balance the cultural symbolism of their work, the rhetorical purpose and the relation between context and claim in different ways. Attempting to make the two sets of theory occupy the same discursive space is difficult and in many ways counter-intuitive; it is necessary primarily because Plumwood’s critique of Adams makes it so. My next section will examine Plumwood’ charge that Adams’ theory involves an unacceptable ethical dualism by excluding plants from consideration.

Ethical Dualism and the Plant–Animal Boundary

	I will now consider Plumwood’s charge that Adams’ thinking participates in dualistic conceptualisation by presupposing a “dualistic polarity between “animals” and “plants””. This is not exactly the same thing as differentiating animals from plants. The charge of dualism suggests that difference is falsely exaggerated (or even constructed) and implies that this is related to the interests of power. Plumwood points out that if humans are not to eat any being that is ethically considerable then this presupposes that there must be a class of beings that are not ethically considerable that we can make our food. Plumwood calls this the Exclusion Assumption and claims that 

Although ontological vegans present themselves as extending our sympathies for our companion life forms on this planet, their rejection of sacred eating carries as its hidden underside another unstated project, that of narrowing and blunting our sympathies and sensibilities for the excluded class of living beings who are needed for our food.

Plumwood considers this to be problematic for several reasons. One of these is that it is a “source of conflict with ecological consciousness, because in the present context of ecological destruction, it would be wise for us to adopt philosophical strategies and methodologies that maximise our sensitivity to other members of our ecological communites and openness to them as ethically considerable beings”. 
Plumwood’s interpretation of Adams’ thinking, again, is based on an abstraction of the meaning of “ontological” vegetarianism from its own ideological context, and an assigning to it of implications that it does not carry. The fact that Adams’ theory only briefly encompasses concern for the suffering of individual plants within its framework does not mean that concern about ecological destruction is in any way occluded. Rather, Adams’ claim about the “ontologizing” of animals represents one aspect of her thinking; her analysis also heavily emphasises the environmental costs of flesh production in the western world, and by keeping her thinking firmly embedded in such contextual details she avoids the risk of losing direct relevance. Plumwood’s suggestion that “ontological” vegetarianism involves “narrowing and blunting our sympathies and sensibilities” for plants conveniently ignores Adams’ emphasis on the environmental impact of “meat” and proceeds clumsily from the idea that there must be one totally coherent and overarching philosophical ethic that encompasses all forms of concern. While practical suggestions for the integration of different concerns are obviously likely to be useful, she demonstrates clearly here that the attempt to accommodate all ethical considerations within an abstract formulation risks losing its focus on the particularities of embodied life. This is the point of Warren’s emphasis on contextual ethics.  
	Plumwood also alleges that “ontological” vegetarianism entails “an abrupt moral and biological break between “animals” and “plants” which is out of step with what we know about the continuity of planetary life”. It certainly seems that there is an indistinct boundary between plant and animal life, which may problematise efforts to draw a solid line between those that have “considerability” (in crude terms) and those who do not. However, on a practical level there is little need to draw such a line: in almost all cases we know when we are eating an animal and when we are eating a plant (or the product of a plant), and we are aware of a significant difference in the subjective life that may be cut short, as Adams’ asserts:

It may be theoretically asked whether carrots are being exploited, but once we situate ourselves within the lived reality we know as this world, we must surely know or intuit that the eating of a horse, cow, pig, or chicken is different from the eating of a carrot. The apparent failure of environmentalists to stipulate this is a failure to participate in embodied knowledge; it reinforces the idea that we live by abstractions.

Adams also suggests that questioning the distinction between eating a carrot and eating a cow is an example of Cartesian doubt, which exposes an irony in Plumwood’s claim that 

Carol Adams simply ridicules the idea that plant lives could have individual value or that plants could have forms of awareness, for example, in exactly the same way the idea that animals might have minds was ridiculed earlier by those who urged that animals were beneath consideration.

Adams does not ridicule this idea (although she has highlighted the way that it is often used to ridicule vegetarians). Her point is that an embodied awareness that draws on knowledge of relationships with animals provides the epistemological basis for knowing that they can suffer, as well as for caring about that suffering. It seems disingenuous of Plumwood to then attempt to link this aspect of Adams’ thinking to the Cartesian denial of subjectivity to animals, which was actually based on rejecting an embodied awareness.
	Adam’s theory is not dualistic in any meaningful sense. She does not intend any implication that plants are “inferior” to animals to arise from it and her work does not legitimate any oppression of the plant kingdom. She points out that many more plants are eaten by “meat” animals than would be eaten if these animals were not kept, and by keeping her analysis closely tied to context is able to observe that:

The current reality is that the greatest exploitation of plant foods, the accompanying deployment of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, the production of monoculture crops that neglect the needs of the soil are all related not to human’s need to eat plants but to creating foods for terminal animals to eat before they become flesh. The extensive exploitation of the plant kingdom arises because of the extensive exploitation of animals. (Italics Adams’)

The only way that it can be implied that Adams’ thinking is dualistic, then, is by overemphasising on an unnecessarily abstract symbolic level the importance of the claim that animals should not be ontologized as edible. However, if the distinction between plants and animals that this implies is accepted as a salient difference, rather than an exaggerated or constructed dualism, then any objection vanishes. One of the problems with Plumwood’s observations is that they attempt to assimilate “ontological” vegetarianism to the philosophical animal rights position arrived at by ethical extensionism. However, since Adams’ analysis explicitly distances itself from this project, Plumwood’s critique is, again, somewhat lacking. As Adams says at the beginning of Neither Man nor Beast, 

I recognize many other issues besides that of animals’ subordination as problematic. I am not patching animals onto an undisturbed notion of human rights, but am examining the place of animals in the fabric of feminist ethics – a starting point that already presumes that exploitation entails more than the exploitation of animals. This clarification is necessary to insure that this book is clearly situated in the reader’s mind in an a priori problematic of human-nature relations.

The final section of my analysis will consider the question of “disgust”, and its manifestation as an occasional response of vegetarians to the eating of “meat”.

Disgust

	Plumwood attempts to link the supposed alienation of “ontological” vegetarians to their occasional expression of feelings of disgust at the eating of “meat”. I believe the issue to be much more complex than this. While it is probable that the thinking of a committed vegetarian or vegan will become to some degree “alienated” from the dominant viewpoint (which systematically naturalizes oppression) the implication by Plumwood that this is a pathological form of alienation, or an alienation from embodiment, is reductive and wrong. I would like to briefly suggest a way to begin understanding this phenomenon that does not implicitly insult the psychological integrity of committed vegetarians. 
	Plumwood’s claim is that

An explicit alienation from ecological embodiment (and its finale of bodily disintegration) is expressed in the ontological vegetarian practice of treating human predation as so universally alien and fallen, its results should only ever be referred to in terms calculated to horrify, revolt, and disgust, terms that deliberately and uncritically invoke alienated traditions of fear and aversion in relation to the flesh, the dead human body, and the dread of ghoulish “corpse consumption”.

The first point to make is that the terms used by vegetarians are in fact often precise and accurate descriptions of what is going on. “Corpse consumption”, the example given by Plumwood, is a descriptive, factual account of what “meat” eating involves. The problem here may be that “meat” eaters are used to using linguistic and psychological avoidance mechanisms to maintain a distance from the more unsavoury implications of their diet. Adams details many of these mechanisms, such as the “absent referent” and the use of “meat” as a “mass term” that denies any individuality or subjectivity to its original form as an aware being. When vegetarians destabilize the functioning of these mechanisms by making accurate observations about what is involved then it is comforting for this to be interpreted, by the dominant viewpoint, as an expression of pathological tendencies. Such an interpretation acts to restore stability to the distancing mechanisms and to diffuse the psychological dissonance that may have been experienced. 
	However, I do not wish to falsely underplay the fact that to varying degrees, vegetarians may experience feelings of revulsion or disgust at “meat” eating (indeed the above discussion even implies some small amount of revulsion in “meat” eaters when brought to a moment of clarity). The revulsion felt by vegetarians is rarely “calculated” however and may commonly be experienced on a deeper level than is actually expressed. This revulsion is usually reserved for unnecessary human “meat” eating and does not extend to the eating of flesh by other animals or unprivileged humans. It is perhaps similar in some ways to a feeling of revulsion and disgust at the awareness of a brutal assault. Unprovoked assaults are ethically proscribed within most cultural systems, just as “meat” is ethically proscribed in vegetarian subcultural systems. For most vegetarians this is not experienced as an injunction against something that is otherwise desireable, but is experienced as something that is right, and that is internalised as an aspect of selfhood, just as ethically mature and integrated humans experience the proscription of unprovoked assaults as something that is right. Deane Curtin emphasises that

Our relations to what we will count as food shape one’s sense of personhood, and how one understands one’s relations to others. Through accepting the possibility that our relations to food can define who we are, one comes to see the choice of what will count as food as a moral choice that reflects who one is and as an ontological commitment to the way the world will be ordered by that choice.

This psychological process is implicit in being a committed vegetarian and appears to be something that Plumwood objects strongly to, perhaps because she perceives it as an implicit critique of less committed positions. While a critique of practices situated in the western cultural context is implicit in committed western vegetarianism, very few committed vegetarians are arrogant or ignorant enough to attempt to extend this implicit critique beyond their own cultural space, where the specific phenomena that it arises in protest against are located. This, crucially, is why in order to discredit Adams’ work, Plumwood finds it necessary to fabricate false claims of universalism for her situated theory. 
	The question of disgust may arise, then, in response to an awareness of the transgression both of the integrity of another’s person, and of the internalised moral boundary that makes this seem wrong. This response may be heightened in committed vegetarians because the transgression is not an isolated assault but is a systematic and socially sanctioned oppression of millions. This oppression commonly involves conditions of physical and psychological torture that no “terms calculated to horrify, revolt, and disgust” could even begin to capture. The ingestion of any “meat” that takes place within a social system that participates in this may risk being seen as symbolic of support for the entire enterprise. As Mary Douglas has observed, in a discussion unconnected with vegetarianism:

The body is a complex structure. The functions of its different parts and their relation afford a source of symbols for other complex structures. We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body.

Conclusion

	Val Plumwood’s attack on Carol Adams is badly informed and disingenuous. She misrepresents Adams’ work and uses abstraction from context to claim that it means things that it quite evidently does not mean. In addition to this, she makes suggestions that indirectly insult and attempt to discredit Adams’ thinking, claiming at one point “People, especially people concerned about others enough to be concerned about animals, do not usually set out to make theory that is alienated and racist”. The implication that this assertion makes is apparently pointed in Adams’ direction, and is clearly unwarranted and harmful.
	Throughout my discussion I have been wary of entering into a “You’re alienated – No you’re more alienated” situation. This would clearly be ridiculous for a discussion supposedly concerned with liberatory politics and resistance to the oppression of others. However, Plumwood’s mistakes appear to highlight a danger that goes with attempting to see embedded cultural phenomena in overly abstract symbolic terms. It is impossible to honestly understand the meaning of committed western vegetarianism or veganism without seeing it as an impassioned response to the commodified, self-deceiving, corrupt and abusive western context. This is Carol Adams’ starting point, and her work deserves attention on that basis.
	There does seem to be a need for some degree of theoretical integration of frameworks for thinking about abuses of animals, of ecological systems, and of unprivileged societies. In this respect, there are valuable elements in Plumwood’s account; these elements are not the ones discussed here. If the integration is to do justice to each concern then it will have to take each concern for what it is, understanding clearly not only its geographical and ecological aspects, but also its ideological, relational, symbolic and emotional aspects. Reductive formulae are unlikely to suffice. Offering an adequate structure to begin this process, ultimately, means being open to the value that there is in any thinking about liberation, being able to understand such thinking on its own terms, and if such thinking does risk directly oppressing others criticising it on the basis of this oppression, rather than on terms manufactured to present a convincing academic case.  

Bibliography

Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990), Cambridge: Polity Press

Carol J. Adams, “The Feminist Traffic in Animals” in Greta Gaard (Ed.), Ecofeminsm, Women, Animals, Nature (1993), Philadelphia: Temple University Press

Carol J. Adams, Neither Man nor Beast (1994), New York: Continuum

Deane Curtin, “Toward an Ecological Ethic of Care” in Josephine Donovan & Carol J. Adams (Ed.s), Beyond Animal Rights (1996), New York: Continuum

Josephine Donovan, “Animal Right and Feminist Theory” in Greta Gaard (Ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1994), London: Routledge (originally published 1966)

Lori Gruen, “Dismantling Oppression: An Analysis of the Connection between Women and Animals” in Greta Gaard (Ed.), Ecofeminsm: Women, Animals, Nature

Marti Kheel, “The Liberation of Nature: A Circular Affair”, Environmental Ethics Vol.7, Summer 1985, p.135-149

Marti Kheel, “From Heroic to Holistic Ethics: The Ecofeminist Challenge” in Greta Gaard (Ed.), Ecofeminsm: Women, Animals, Nature

Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1990), London: Routledge

Val Plumwood, “Integrating Ethical Frameworks for Animals, Humans and Nature: A Critical Feminist Eco-Socialist Analysis” (2000), Ethics and the Environment, 5(2), p.285-322

Karren J. Warren, “The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism”, Environmental Ethics Vol.12, Summer 1990, p.124-140