Good morning friends and comrades,
I took an unannounced break from these. The break was planned, I just forgot to announce it. The reason for forgetting and the reason for the break are the same... I am doing Too Many Things. Alongside a demanding job, freelance work that won't go away and the masters, I am also training for an endurance cycling race, and moving house.
So I guess I'm back to say that this newsletter is one of the Too Many Things. I'm not ready to give it up completely, but it might become more an occassional surprise than a regular visitor to your inbox.
Saint Jerome Writing | Caravaggio
I've been busy with my essay (almost done 🤞🏻). It's building on Jason W. Moore's work, and covers the Nature/Society dualism, capitalism and work, and of course, animals. A quick round-up of a of couple bits I've read for it.
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Jason W. Moore: if you like big sweeping narratives across centuries, good for understanding his concepts.
Capitalism in the Web of Life by Jason W. Moore: I found this difficult to understand because I hadn't read marx. If you know exactly what use-value, surplus-value, M-C-M etc etc means, I think you'd get more from the book. Found it easier after I did read some Marx and Harvey halfway through. But Moore has plenty of short articles that get his point across, I wouldn't bother with the whole book.
Animal labour: a new frontier of interspecies justice?: Edited book, I mostly read the chapters about food animals. Fantastic! Quite academic though and expects some prior knowledge of the arguments. Definitely not an introductory text to animal labour discourse.
Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity by Kendra Coulter: Didn't agree with many of her conclusions, but very interesting analysis of people who work with animals, animals who work (sometimes with people), and people and animals working together.
Beasts of Burden by Sunaura Taylor: This didn't end up being relevant (and I kinda knew it wouldn't be) but I read it anyway because I've been wanting to for ages. It's glorious. If you care about disability justice AND/OR animals, this book is for you. If you don't care about either of those things, I don't know why you are here tbh.
Special mentions...
Part IV of Capital I: Primitive Accumulation and the companion chapters by David Harvey. Despite the sheer size of the book enough to scare anyone away, it's actually a really good read. I'm looking forward to starting from the beginning.
Everything by Dinesh Wadiwell. Possibly my favourite theorist (because his 'areas of interest' are disability and animals).
A couple articles by Maan Barua that really helped connect animals and Jason W. Moore
“Animals are part of the working class”: a challenge to labor history by Jason Hribal: a truly magnificent essay.
Ok, that's it for now, thanks for reading. Hopefully see you soon.