For the Good of the Species: Gary Francione and the Omnipresence of Eugenics in Animal Rights Rhetoric

Abstract

By bringing critical animal studies into conversation with communication, this article completes 3 tasks: First, it complicates the communication discipline’s understanding of the animal rights movement by presenting its oft-ignored tensions and conflicting paradigms; second, it reveals how eugenical rhetoric has been foundational both in defending human/animal exploitation and in developing prototypical animal advocacy practices; third, using a critical public address–inspired approach, it deconstructs vegan abolitionist Gary Francione’s purportedly ultraradical rhetoric, revealing its problematic eugenical underpinnings. This revelation not only complicates Francione’s radical status but also questions the ethical legitimacies of a conventional, Western rights-based paradigm of animal rights.

Keywords:

• Animal Rights
• Critical Animal Studies
• Eugenics
• Rhetoric
• Social Advocacy

Notes

1. Ironically, Singer’s particular act-utilitarian philosophy grounds itself in interests rather than rights per se. Regardless, his philosophy is inextricably associated with an animal rights movement, a movement that, according to Francione and Charlton (2016), takes Singer as its father.

2. See the Journal for Critical Animal Studies for a more complete sampling of abolitionist-friendly texts.