Alice Crary and Lori Gruen, "Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory" (Polity, 2022)
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What is the central premise of Animal Crisis and why does it matter now?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Sarah Tyson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Denver. And I'm co host of the channel, along with Carrie Figor, Robert Tleis, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Alice Cray, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. And Lori Gruin. William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. Their new book, Animal Crisis, A New Critical Theory, is just out from Polity Press.
As we lose more individual animals and entire species to catastrophic climate change, habitat destruction, toxic dumping and other human activities. It becomes increasingly difficult to register the full scope of the crisis. In Animal Crisis, Cray and Gruin reinvigorate the discourse of animal ethics. With a critical theoretical approach that gives us new ways of thinking about what is owed to animals. By theorizing the links between human and non human animal liberation, They offer ways of understanding why it can be so hard to see, hear, or feel the value and dignity of the animals right in front of us. Offering practices of interspecies solidarity, Crairy and Gruen show us that we can transform the crisis we are in, but we must dismantle human supremacism to even connect with the need.
Lori Gruen and Alice Cray, welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Um, well let's dive right in. I'd love to hear about um how you came to write this book and especially how you came to write this book together.
Well, um I'll start. This is Lori. Um and we um we both were very interested in animals before we began working on the book together. I became interested in animal ethics when I was an undergraduate, which was a really long time ago. Um, and I got turned on to animal ethics in a philosophy class where we read, of course, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, and I instantly became a vegetarian. And realized that it didn't make sense for me not to become vegan. That is somebody who tries hard to avoid animal products altogether. And this was in the like, I don't know, the early nineteen eighties. I even convinced Singer um to make the case for veganism when I was helping him revise animal liberation for the second edition and
А тан аррій um graduated um f from undergraduate and I had started graduate school but decided to leave graduate school to do full time activist work in Washington DC. Um so I've had a long history with thinking about animal ethics from a fairly traditional point of view. Um, I also had a lot of time in the animal movement, which was also deeply influen influenced by the utilitarian. um view of animal ethics. And fortunately when I went back to graduate school after spending about six years doing activist work, um, I was able to dive into feminist philosophy. And in that moment I was um able to bring my concerns about social justice into my philosophical work and I found that my utilitarian leanings at that time weren't really serving me.
Um at all. Um and so what um What I ended up doing was sort of moving away from thinking about what we now call sort of more standard or traditional approaches to animal ethics. Um I'll let I'll let Alice say a little bit now.
Thanks, Laurie. So uh my own path to anal ethics was I think comparatively really standard, just as a child, like almost the any number of children I was interested in the treatment of animals, for instance, curious about the fact that my grandfather, my mother's father, would refuse to eat chicken as a result of a visit to a chicken slaughterhouse as a young man, even though he ate Other meats. I would have explored vegetarianism if I hadn't been intimidated by my family's view that it was rude and self indulgent. Anyway, as an undergraduate
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the central premise of Animal Crisis and why does it matter now?
0:01–10:41
2
How did Alice Crary and Lori Gruen’s personal journeys shape the book’s focus?
10:41–22:03
3
Why did the authors decide to turn a review essay into a full‑length critical theory?
22:03–32:38
4
How does the palm‑oil driven destruction of orangutan habitats illustrate the book’s core argument?
32:38–42:44
5
What role do rats play in exposing animal dignity and human de‑humanisation?
42:44–54:33
6
How do octopus‑centered media (e.g., My Octopus Teacher) reveal the limits of visual perception?
54:33–1:00:29
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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