Book Review: Racism as Zoological Witchcraft

 

Image: The cover of the book has a light blue background with an abstract illustration of a human eye at the center. The eye iris of the eye is composed of three layered circles. Outside the iris, a light blue outline of a forest overlaps on the right side, in the first circle is light orange with a silhouette of a deer with antlers overlapping the left side. The next circle is pink with another silhouette of fir trees on the upper left. The last circle at the center is composed of a black starry night sky with a floating white silhouette of a human on the upper right. The top half of the book has the title in large, pink, uppercase letters. Below and slightly overlapping the bottom of the eye is Aph Ko's name in large letters. Below that in small letters is, "Illustrations by Alise and Jack Eastgate, Foreword by Claire Jean Kim."

Once in a while, a theorist comes along and helps you realize just how stuck in a paradigm your thinking is. There is a long history of our movements often being categorized by waves or generations- a practice that often puts white voices in the spotlight. As times and society change (and while many things stay the same,) daring authors, activists, thinkers, and others break through what is accepted at the time to create something needed and new. These people are critical to the evolution of thinking and activism. Aph Ko is one of these people.

I have followed Ko's work since Black Vegans Rock and Aphro-ism and also had the privilege of seeing her speak at an Intersectional Justice conference (of which her talk was one of the best, if not the best.) I have been regularly blown away by her ability to use the knowledge we have to create new things, rather than only repeating or strengthening ideas that already exist. In "Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out," Aph Ko takes many belief systems regarding anti-racism, animal liberation, intersectionality, feminism, and other kinds of radicalism and dissects them mercilessly. While reading Ko's work in this book especially, I was moved by her unapologetic passion. Ko tells the truth and creates thought exercises that stimulate the mind and create change even if a particular concept is not fully fleshed out. Ko has clearly considered things outside the box so intensely that her excitement about the evolution and change of our movements shines through the pages. 

This book is well organized and fairly short at 126 pages, not including notes and sources. Normally, I would read something this short more quickly. But, Ko introduces so many complicated concepts and discusses so many intense and serious things, that I put the book down frequently. This book requires one to take their time and think. Ko begins from the premise that many of our movements are colonized and static in how they approach the subjects at hand- focusing mainly on racism and animality (though me dividing the two into separate camps for the sake of clarity goes against Aph's thesis.) Ko has a background in media studies and uses her experience to analyze these topics in various media- the movie Get Out being central to the text.

I actually decided to rewatch Get Out after reading Ko's first analysis of it in the book. I am a person who often pays attention to how other animals intersect with humans' stories in media. However, I did not realize just how intertwined the constructs of "human" and "animal" were in Get Out until reading Ko's analysis and rewatching the film. Ko highlights how human and other animal suffering and exploitation are not just metaphors for one another, but are intimately intertwined as part of a much more insidious system of what she refers to as Zoological Racism. She weaves this analysis throughout the book as a cohesive thread.

There was one section of the book that I struggled with and that was a chapter titled Moving from Intersectionality to Multidimensional Liberation Theory. Ko previously coined the term social layerism to describe "the ways in which intersectional activists and scholars often pile oppressions on top of one another without an "intersection" or "connection" ever really taking place." This is basically a colonized, white veganism version of faux intersectionality that is separate from the concepts promoted by Black lesbian feminists like the Combahee River Collective. It seemed to me through reading this chapter, that Ko was addressing social layerism rather than actual intersectionality. The idea of multidimensionality is central to intersectionality. It is not that Black women experience racism on top of sexism or vice versa, but that the intersection creates a multidimensional experience different from either oppression on its own. Now, it's clear that Ko understands this. She even goes on to say at the end of the chapter that some people will make the argument I just made and that it is incorrect. She claims that we are so steeped in intersectionality being the accepted theory that that stands in the way of us being able to grasp multidimensionality liberation theory. That said, I still found myself searching for the difference between the two.

Ko goes on to explain multidimension liberation theory using a very helpful analogy, complete with illustration, of different kinds of houses. This is where her theories did begin to separate from and evolve past intersectionality for me. She explains that we currently look at oppressions from the front of the house seeing only the front doors as an entrance to fighting it. What oppression really is is a multidimensional house with many different entrances. We must find and explore those in order to most effectively fight oppression.

I also was both enlightened and confused by her example of Black mens experiences as being gendered and sexualized. This also seemed to be in line with or expanding upon intersectionality to me, (i.e. the intersection of being Black and male creates a unique set of struggles.) It is undoubtedly important not to place Black men in the same patriarchal category as white men, but I think she took it a bit far. She quotes mens studies theorists Johnson and Curry throughout this section. While I did understand some of what she was saying- such as Black men needing to be included in the history of white sexual violence against Black bodies, the importance of dismantling the Black male predator trope especially with their history of victimization, and the horrific history of lynching enforced through the power that both white men and women have held over Black male bodies- some of the text seemed to border on the whole #notallmen/men-get-X-too phenomenon that is often used to silence women discussing struggle and violence at the hands of men- including Black men. I am not saying Ko was silencing women. On the contrary, I believe she is trying to expand upon often one-dimensional theories about race and gender in important ways. However, I was left saying to myself, "I would never claim that I lack white privilege due to the fact that my being trans, queer, disabled, etc causes me not to experience it in the same way as a white cis het man." Is Blackness in particular the oppression that overrides any other advantage? If a disabled man is violent towards a nondisabled woman, do we discount the patriarchy and misogyny involved because he is disabled and she is not? Perhaps it is that white supremacy and animality are the central tenets and the same thinking would not apply to all marginalized people.

Johnson's quotes used by Ko were the ones that I felt uneasy about, but wasn't sure exactly why. As a result, I decided to read some of Johnson's posts online in case the small quotes out of context led to a misunderstanding on my part. Reading more from Johnson only bothered me more. He makes valid points about the oppression of Black men, but the way he frames them is from a staunchly anti-feminist viewpoint where he constantly devalues the voices of of women and often seems to suggest that Black women are oppressing Black men by asking that women be centered. He believes that Black men are incapable of having male privilege or patriarchal advantages because of their oppression based on race. He uses anecdotes artfully to paint a false picture that Black women have it easier than Black men. It is as if he does not understand the various reasons Black feminisms came about and reduces almost all of them to extremist misandrists. He demeans sensitive and gentle men, claims women actually want "hypermasculinity" "behind closed doors," and refers to hypermasculine men as real and others as just pandering to feminism. All in all, the messages about the needs of Black men to be included are overshadowed by the anti-feminism and low-key misogynoir in his writings. I could write more about this, but this was such a small section of the book that I don't want my opinions about this guy who did not write it to dominate. Also, having said all of that, I haven't stopped thinking about this. So, perhaps some of these things will settle into my mind and I will feel differently. Perhaps there are things I don't understand yet due to the phenomena that Aph Ko describes in which we are stuck in one way of thinking.

In wrapping things up, Ko discusses "Afro-zoological resistance" as the solution to these conflicts arising from the static nature of our current understandings of oppression. She states, "Animal is part of the vocabulary of white supremacist violence; it signifies the rhetorical and social branding of certain bodies, which white supremacy wants to consume, exploit, and eliminate without question." She reminds us that single-issue and "two-dimensional" intersectional movements are colonized and locked in place requiring that they be upended in order to fully understand the scope of oppression. She also discusses how this fits into animal liberation in particular stating, "...veganism isn't just about kicking a meat-eating habit and getting some veggies into your diet... It's a powerful rejection of a racist food system and a racist, cannibalistic politics that characterizes animals and nonwhite people as disposable and consumable."

Overall, Aph Ko provides the needed upheaval of current systems of anti-oppression thought and activism that is critical for the growth of all movements over time. I am very excited to watch the ideas she explores grow and affect change over time. This book raises more questions than it answers and I believe that was part of Ko's intention. I still have quite a lot to think about.

This was also posted to my goodreads.