Two Book Reviews by Rhona Zaid, PhD     home
From The Civil Abolitionist  Spring 2000

Wind of Fire by Joan B Clair   (Below.  Scroll down.)

The Sexual Politics of Meat
by Carol J. Adams
New York: Continuum, 1990, 2000        reviewed by Rhona Zaid, Ph.D.

    In her thoughtful and meticulously researched study, the first scholarly
work of its kind, author Carol J. Adams presents a powerful and unique view
of vegetarianism and its inherent political and social implications against
all forms of oppression and cruelty. She views vegetarianism as liberating,
not only for women, but for all of humanity. In her walk down the movement's
impressive corridors, within which congregate many of the early proponents of
women's rights, she illustrates one of its most salient features: animal liberation
ever has attracted the socially conscious and aware in every society.

         From the outset, Adams's keen definition of the subconscious acceptance of
(for many people) and even craving for flesh foods is compelling: "Behind
every meal of meat is an absence; the death of the animal whose place the meat
takes. The 'absent referent' {emphasis added} is that which separates the meat
eater from the animal and the animal from the end product." Such dissociation,
which is perpetuated by those who benefit, either politically or economically,
by promoting flesh consumption, objectifies animals for human beings, even as women, and other aggrieved groups, are subject to objectification.
   
         Identifying flesh consumption with masculinity, particularly in the West, sadly
is axiomatic. Men, incessantly pursued by propagandizing through sources that
run the gamut from slick Madison Avenue campaigns even to the Bible, which
promote and validate flesh diets, are, in reality, also victims. If it is an historical
inevitability that victims generally become victimizers, according to the hierarchy
of conditioning, then there is ample evidence, as Adams observes, of a correlation
between a stronger group's desire to oppress a weaker. Thus lower, and even
middle-class men exploit women and animals, while women from those groups
exploit animals. In the end, nonhuman animals and human animals alike, in their
majority, are exploited by the few.

                Demonstrating a rare and balanced perspective, Adams cites many of
vegetarianism's famous men--Socrates, Ovid, Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley,
Bernard Shaw, and Henry Salt--to illustrate the automatic liberality of
spirit that ethical vegetarianism imbues. Human beings, women as well as
men, are enslaved by flesh eating: physically, emotionally, morally, and
spiritually. Once an individual recognizes and espouses the equality among
all creatures, he/she cannot help but embrace equality among people,
regardless of race, social class, or gender.

           Adams sensitively and intelligently explodes the thorny but persistent
myth that the vegetarian movement is "racist" in its concern for nonhuman
animals over oppressed human groups. "...the vegetarian body of literature
demonstrates that soul food can be vegetarian and that knowledge of {the
individual's} enslaved and oppressed {past and} ancestors need not be at the
expense of the enslaved oppressed animals."

    Her historical journey, from the eighteenth century to the present,
evidences a consistent, if often unacknowledged, connection between the goals
of vegetarianism and other challengers to oppression: pacifism,
abolitionism, universal suffrage, and the modern women's movement. Her
faith in the future resides in recognizing and according vegetarianism its
rightful central place in the ideal of liberating all the inhabitants,
nonhuman and human alike, of this planet.


Wind-of-Fire
by Joan Beth Clair
Wind-of-Fire Press, 1995                        reviewed by Rhona Zaid, PhD

    In an era of enthroned and rigidly enforced secularism, author Joan Beth Clair's
spiritual insights and revelations, expressed with significant simplicity in her work, Wind-of-Fire, speak to one of the profoundest needs in today's world: recognition
of the spiritual nature of nonhuman animals.  Courageous and caring, Clair shows modernity's error, particularly obvious in its official institutions, in its almost pathological fear of acknowledging the need for genuine spi-rituality and the cruel consequences that are the inevitable result of that attitude.

    Under the patient tutelage of Wind-of-Fire, a canine companion aptly named for her spirit and beauty, Clair creates a series of vignettes, experiences and memories, some amusing, many moving, and others infuriating in their depiction of the unfeeling treatment of Wind-of-Fire, and indirectly Clair, must endure. Although surprised, she shows no hint of annoying naivete about human behavior. Even in her occasional moral outrage, the author maintains her equanimity throughout the book, which draws the reader into its atmosphere of cohesive peace and calm.

    The central thread that winds through her writing, that nonhuman animals represent the "untouchables," the unclean, who must be segregated, is a powerful analogy. But Clair's questioning of this attitude transcends mere-and safe-concern for the treatment of animals, and dares to break new ground. In choosing to call humans, or at least that portion of the human race that refuses to have proper regard for its nonhuman fellow beings, "humanoids," she demonstrates admirably the consequences of objectification: "I am trying to give the reader a sense of what it is like to be de-
personalized, to be regarded as 'thing-ness,'" she writes. "When we treat others as if they are an inferior group...we lose the spiritual qualities that the word human {should} suggest, qualities of humanness and kindness." All blessed with the spark of the Divine, the author imputes equality to all living beings. Perhaps without fully realizing it, by validating this view, she allows others, who feel the same way, to stop lurking fearfully in the shadows cast by the judgment of humanoids, and join her in the literal sunshine of spiritual enlightenment.

         In exploring communication between nonhuman and human animals, she witnesses the superior intelligence and generosity of understanding of nonhuman animals, in their willingness to communicate with humans in their imperfect and incomplete languages. Although all nonhuman animals have a source of oral communication, they generally communicate with each other telepathically, a level of communication far more advanced than human speech.
   
    Clair reminds us that domestic animals, primarily the cats and dogs that come into the home, add knowledge of human language to their array of accomplishments. Anyone who has lived with a dog or cat, and chooses to be honest, must recognize that those animals' scope of understanding of human speech far exceeds a handful of obvious expressions, such as the animal's "name," as assigned by the human, or inane questions: "Do you want to go for a walk?" or "Where is your fuzzy toy?" (Cats hate that one.) Comprehending at a profound level, animals "live and speak the language of the psyche," observes Clair.
 
   Yet joy in this discovery is short-lived for Clair as she realizes the inability of so many humanoids to appreciate or grasp this miracle. Out for a walk with Wind-of-Fire, they enter the patio area of an art museum; the author's human friend goes to get tea, as Clair knows too well that an "untouchable" is not welcome-or tolerated
-in the sacrosanct precincts of human food preparation. Wind-of-Fire sits demurely, respectfully, tied with a leash; it is not enough. A rough-speaking humanoid, out-
fitted with a club, orders Wind-of-Fire out. "No dogs here. You can tie her to that fence." As the author watches her, tied with a leash too short to permit her to sit down, Wind-of-Fire eloquently communicates, "What did I do?" It is the anthem for every individual who has ever witnessed a slight or an injustice to his/her own
animal, the theme song for everyone who has ever dared question the human-established hierarchy.

     Clair delves into the pivotal issue of nonhuman-human animal relations. Many children display an intuitive and innate feeling for nonhuman animals. Yet, rather
than nurture this instinct in humans, to create in them a lifelong appreciation of their animal fellow beings, "{if} there is some sympathy for a child having a close relationship with an animal...it is expected that the child give up this relationship when he or she matures." By equating regard and love for nonhuman animals with childish fancies," or even nonsense, an attitude one must outgrow, Clair ably demonstrates the descent of human child into humanoid adult.

     In this advanced technological age of encouraged nonbelief, of expendability and cloning, despite prodigious protests to the contrary, the undesirability of society's outcasts outcasts, its "untouchables," and not particularly nonhuman animals, increases. With no St. Francis, St. Hubert, the patron of anti-hunters, or St. Basil, the saint who preached the equality of all of the Creator's creatures, on the horizon, Clair's understated eloquence accentuates the need for faith in an age of faithlessness, and the recognition of the unity of all souls in an era of pronounced and perilous fragmentation.
   
  Unlike most "socially-minded" modern thinkers, Clair steadfastly respects the Source of her inspiration. "We live...in a world that does not reflect the Divine, because we have lost the relationship to the Divine as reflected in all creatures." The positive message of her one-of-a-kind book--how to rekindle that Divine spark--tonic, is a welcome addition to our collective quest for earthly harmony and spiritual understanding.                                                  Back to Spring 2000 CivAb