Agenda

24 Apr 2025 01:00

Animal Politics and The Rise of Vegan Nationalism in Israel

Online

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ANIMALS AND COLONIALISM
Virtual lecture series organized and moderated by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (University of California, San Diego) and Federica Timeto (Ca’Foscari University, Venice), in collaboration with the Environmental Humanities Degree at Ca’ Foscari University. 

Animal Politics and The Rise of Vegan Nationalism in Israel: A Critical Examination of the "Animal Nationalism" Framework
Hiroshi Yasui, National Institutes for the Humanities and Doshisha University

In Israel, the animal rights movement gained significant momentum in the 2010s, leading to the mainstreaming of veganism. This societal shift is characterized by the depoliticization of veganism, the rise of right-wing vegans, and the emergence of figures who use animal rights to assert the superiority of the Israeli state. This talk frames these developments as the rise of vegan nationalism in Israel, analyzing them from political, economic, and ideological perspectives. By situating this phenomenon within the concept of vegan nationalism, the talk critically engages with the existing “animal nationalism” framework in critical animal studies. It examines how the politics of animal rights, the inclusion of vegans, anthropocentrism in the context of war, the hegemonic human-animal binary, and the dehumanization of individuals in the war on terror demonstrate the complex and overlapping ways in which human-animal boundaries are mobilized in the war on terror.

Hiroshi Yasui is a Research Fellow at the Center for Innovative Research, National Institutes for the Humanities, and at Multiculturalism and Intersectionality in Complex Cities, Doshisha University. He earned his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 2023 with a doctoral dissertation titled The Politics Surrounding Rights and Nationalism in Contemporary Israel: A Comparative Analysis of LGBTQ Rights and Animal Rights, which was awarded the 14th Shigeru Nambara Memorial Award for Publication. His areas of research include Gender and Sexuality, Queer Theory, and Critical Animal Studies. In 2022, his paper on vegan nationalism in Israel was published in the academic journal Settler Colonial Studies.

April 24 @ 8:00 a.m. JST
1:00 a.m. CET; 7:00 p.m. ET [April 23]; ; 9:00 a.m. AEST

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Image credits: Roee Shpernik

Organizzatore

Department of Asian and North African Studies; EH Degree

Allegati

Poster / Programme - CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ANIMALS AND COLONIALISM 2229 KB
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