Abstract
This chapter offers an overview of the different agents currently operating in Italy as part of the animal liberation movement. It analyses the impact on this social reality by books and essays published or translated in Italian in the last 20 years in the field of Animal Ethics. From the reception of Peter Singer and Tom Regan’s ideas mediated by the work of Paola Cavalieri, Italian philosophers have shaped the narratives and the rhetoric of animal advocates and liberationists. On the other side, activists’ debates on the best strategies to adopt involved intellectuals and enriched their production on Animal Liberation. Groups with an intersectional approach have paid particular attention to theoretical implications and political consequences of their acts, developing radical, non-anthropocentric forms of antispeciesism.
Although authors vastly cooperated to this essay, Niccolò Bertuzzi originally wrote the sections The Italian Rebus and Mainstream Positions, while Giorgio Losi wrote Defining Concepts and Radical Approaches. We would like to thank Frank Brown Cloud and Amanda Vredenburgh for their excellent work of copyediting.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The first independent translation was provided by LAV, Lega Anti Vivisezione (Anti-vivisection League, 1977–current). Several years later the book was published by an official editor, Mondadori.
- 2.
Original edition: 1983
- 3.
According to Eurispes 2019, the percentage of Italian vegetarians and vegans is 7.3% of the population, meaning +0.2% compared to 2018, −0.3% compared to 2017, −0.7% compared to 2016, and +1.4% compared to 2015. Such oscillation indicates the instability of the phenomenon, but these fluctuations could be due to a limitation in data collection due to response bias, stigmatization issues, or distinct personal definitions of vegetarianism and veganism.
- 4.
Consider the success of ruthless business operations like the label Vegan OK (2000–current), which identifies wholly vegan products on supermarket shelves.
- 5.
The first Italian vegetarian association, founded in 1952 by Aldo Capitini, was called Società Vegetariana (Vegetarian Society). Capitini, an anti-fascist philosopher and politician, is known as the “Italian Gandhi” and initiated the famous Perugia-Assisi Peace March.
- 6.
With strategies analogous to the American PETA (1980–current), Animalisti Italiani adopted as a sponsor porn star Rocco Siffredi, with slogans like “Pene più dure” (“Harsher penalties” but also “A harder penis”) for those who abandon their pets.
- 7.
By “ecumenical” we mean here that the approach aims at uniting all animal advocates, regardless of their political ideas and the tactics they use.
- 8.
Much attention has been given recently to her book, Tritacarne (Innocenzi 2017).
- 9.
This is a quote of a famous Italian song entitled La coppia più bella del mondo (Adriano Celentano and Claudia Mori 1968). Such quote sounds extremely weird referring to an animal advocate and a chef who supports culinary traditions and practices that are strongly meat-based, ferociously adverse to veganism.
- 10.
Similar online initiatives have been promoted in the past years, for example, by the network Agire Ora (Act Now, 2003–current).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
The present analysis of Mainstream Positions, including self-defined antispeciesist activists and influencers whose political postures go from liberal to populist, excludes those figures affiliated with right-wing political movements that could hardly fit into the theoretical framework of antispeciesism. For an examination of this area of activism, we refer to the booklet Conoscerli per isolarli (2016) by Antispefa: https://antispefa.noblogs.org/files/2016/02/Conoscerli-per-isolarli-antispefa-2016.pdf. This text precedes the formation of Movimento Animalista (2017–current) by Vittoria Brambilla, publicly endorsed by Silvio Berlusconi. For a more updated retrospective, see Bertuzzi and Reggio (2019).
- 15.
As has been documented on websites like Bite Back http://www.directaction.info/
- 16.
Particularly the campaign Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (1999–2014) in the UK
- 17.
In 2018 Professor Mormino launched the first official course on animal studies in Italy, at the University of Milan. Thanks to the efforts of Mormino and others, the University of Milan has recently become a centre for research, seminars, and conferences about the question of animality.
- 18.
Although the first complete Italian translation of Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat was published by Vanda in early 2020, excerpts of the book and other essays by the famous eco-feminist have been published before, for example, in 2010 in Liberazioni 1, 23–56, and in Filippi and Trasatti (2010: 23–38).
- 19.
For example, in 2014, a conference at the Catholic University of Milan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia9ueHam3R0&t=6s%29) and one at the festival BergamoScienza (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MK3xsGypYc)
- 20.
http://www.liberazioni.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Filippi-07.pdf. This article has been published by Liberazioni in an unofficial issue, shortly before the publication of the first issue in 2010.
- 21.
- 22.
http://bioviolenza.blogspot.com/2015/06/lettera-aperta-ciwf-compassion-in-world.html
- 23.
- 24.
https://resistenzanimale.noblogs.org/
- 25.
This is a project about the public stigmatization of veganism and vegetarianism: http://it.vegephobia.info/
- 26.
Here is the original text in English: https://dr.library.brocku.ca/bitstream/handle/10464/5229/Brock_Colling_Sarat_2013.pdf.
- 27.
In Italian, the definition of these places as shelters rather than sanctuaries is prevailing.
- 28.
- 29.
See also the recent documentary by Davide Majocchi entitled No Pet. Liberi e randagi (No Pets: Free and Stray, 2018).
- 30.
Originally published in English as a journal article, in Italy Simonsen’s text was published as a book.
Works Cited
Adams, Carol. 2020. Carne da macello. La politica sessuale della carne. Una teoria critica femminista vegetariana. Milan: Vanda.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open. Man and Animal. Trans. Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bertuzzi, Niccolò. 2018. I movimenti animalisti in Italia. Strategie, politiche e pratiche di movimento. Milan: Meltemi.
Bertuzzi, Niccolò, and Marco Reggio, eds. 2019. Destre e liberazione animale. Fra qualunquismo e strumentalizzazione. In Smontare la gabbia. Anticapitalismo e movimento di liberazione animale, ed. Niccolò Bertuzzi and Marco Reggio, 43–63. Milan: Mimesis.
Blue, Gwendolyn, and Melanie Rock. 2014. Animal Publics: Accounting for Heterogeneity in Political Life. Society and Animals 22 (5): 503–519.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2015. Per amore di Zoe. Liberazioni 21: 6–14.
Butler, Judith. 2015. Una molteplicità di animali sensuali. In Filippi and Reggio 2015: 23–26.
Calarco, Matthew. 2011. Identity, Difference, Indistinction. The New Centennial Review 21 (2): 41–60.
Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Colling, Sarat. 2017. Animali in rivolta. Confini, resistenza e solidarietà umana. Trans. Les Bitches, and Ed. Feminoska and Marco Reggio. Milan: Mimesis.
Dauvergne, Peter, and Genevieve LeBaron. 2014. Protest Inc.: The Corporatization of Activism. Cambridge: Polity.
De Matteis, Francesca, and Niccolò Bertuzzi. 2019. Attivisti nella rete? L’influenza della comunicazione web sulle nuove forme di protesta. In Bertuzzi and Reggio 2019: 27–42.
Evans, Adrian B., and Mara Miele. 2012. Between Food and Flesh: How Animals Are Made to Matter (and Not to Matter) Within Food Consumption Practices. Environment and Planning D- Society and Space 30 (2): 298–314.
Filippi, Massimo. 2010. Not in My Name. In Filippi and Trasatti 2010: 277–313.
———. 2016a. L’invenzione della specie. Sovvertire la norma, divenire mostri. Verona: Ombre corte.
———. 2016b. I quattro concetti fondamentali dell’antispecismo. Liberazioni 27: 29–42.
Filippi, Massimo, and Marco Reggio, eds. 2015. Corpi che non contano. Judith Butler e gli animali. Milan: Mimesis.
Filippi, Massimo, and Filippo Trasatti, eds. 2010. Nell’albergo di Adamo. Gli animali, la questione animale e la filosofia. Milan: Mimesis.
———, eds. 2013. Crimini in tempo di pace. La questione animale e l’ideologia del dominio. Milan: Eleuthera.
Filippi, Massimo, Michael Hardt, and Marco Maurizi. 2016. Altre specie di politica. Milan: Mimesis.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity.
Innocenzi, Giulia. 2017. Tritacarne. Milan: Rizzoli.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. New York: Verso.
Lasch, Christopher. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton.
Maurizi, Marco. 2011. Al di là della natura. Gli animali, il capitale e la libertà. Aprilia: Novalogos.
McAdam, Doug. 1989. The Biographical Consequences of Activism. American Sociological Review 54: 744–760.
Mormino, Gianfranco, Raffaella Colombo, and Benedetta Piazzesi. 2018. Dalla predazione al dominio. La guerra contro gli animali. Milano: Cortina.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2019. La sofferenza è animale. Ed. Massimo Filippi, and Antonio Volpe. Milan: Mimesis.
Regan, Tom. 1990. I diritti animali. Trans. Rodolfo Rini. Milan: Garzanti.
Salzani, Carlo. 2017. From Post-Human to Post-Animal: Posthumanism and the ‘Animal Turn.’. Lo Sguardo 24 (2): 97–109.
Simonsen, Rasmus R. 2012. A Queer Vegan Manifesto. Journal for Critical Animal Studies 10 (3): 51–81.
———. 2014. Manifesto Queer Vegan. Trans. Filippo Trasatti, and Ed. Massimo Filippi and Marco Reggio. Verona: Ortica.
Singer, Peter. 2009. Animal Liberation. New York: Harper.
Zappino, Federico. 2015. Postfazione. In Filippi and Reggio 2015: 75–90.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Losi, G., Bertuzzi, N. (2020). What Is Italian Antispeciesism? An Overview of Recent Tendencies in Animal Advocacy. In: Cimatti, F., Salzani, C. (eds) Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47507-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47507-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47506-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47507-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)