Piers Beirne

Rethinking Bestiality: Towards a Concept of Interspecies Sexual Assault

This paper seeks to introduce a view of bestiality which differs radically from both the anthropocentrism enshrined in the dogma of Judaeo-Christianity and also from the pseudo-liberal tolerance fa...

Cultural relativism and comparative criminology

The recent spate of comparative studies of crime is long overdue as a potential palliative to the traditional ethnocentrism of American criminology. But their comparative method is uncritically taken from two incompatible propositions derived from Durkheimian empiricism. As such, the generalizations about criminal behavior that these studies advance should be treated more with caution than optimism. This essay discusses the alleged advances over Durkheimian empiricism made by two distinct forms of cultural relativism.If what every man believes as a result of perception is indeed to be true for him; if, just as no one is to be a better judge of what another experiences, so no one is better entitled to consider what another thinks is true or false... then, my friend, where is the wisdom of Protagoras, to justify his setting up to teach others and to be handsomely paid for it?Socrates, in PlatosTheaetetus

Peter Singer's ``Heavy Petting'' and the Politics of Animal Sexual Assault

This essay confronts PeterSingers (2001a) controversial suggestion thathuman-animal sexual relations should betolerated if they do not involve cruelty, apseudo-liberal position contradicted by theauthors recent testimony in favor of a Bill tocriminalise bestiality. Against Singer, thisarticle argues that human-animal sex is a harmthat is wrong for the same reasons as isinter-human assault – because it involvescoercion, produces pain and suffering, andviolates the rights of another being. Positively, however, Singers text opens up fora much overdue discussion some difficultquestions about the politics of animal sexualassault.

Gallous stories or dirty deeds? Representing parricide in J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World

The most famous play in the history of Irish theater, J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World has been oddly neglected in sociology and criminology. This article examines the provenance of the violence around which Playboy’s dizzying text swirls, namely, a tragicomic parricide seemingly twice committed. In particular, we ask: is the text plausible? Though Synge’s authorial intentions are not open to complete reclamation, we explore first, his self-stated reliance on the actual cases of William Maley and James Lynchehaun and, second, whether the representation(s) of parricide in Playboy more or less accurately reflected the presence and character of parricide at the time the controversial play was being imagined and first performed in 1907. The culture wars and associated media frenzy over the play provide an ever-looming backcloth against which to interpret the meanings of intergenerational violence in a colonial society lurching towards national self-determination.

Hunting Worlds Turned Upside Down? Paulus Potter’s Life of a Hunter

This chapter is a case study of the extraordinary painting Life of a Hunter (1647–50) by the Dutch artist Paulus Potter. It boasts fourteen rectangular panels and multiple narratives. It depicts a hunter and his hounds who have been captured by their animal quarry. The hunter is tried by the animals, condemned to death and roasted alive. Life of a Hunter provokes several questions: What did Life of a Hunter mean to Potter and to the painting’s audience? When and where did its viewpoint of an ‘upside down’ animal trial originate? Was its moral message encouraged by the pro-animal sentiments expressed by Montaigne? As happened here, an image sometimes manages simultaneously to reflect prevailing cultural standards and to show the way to their erosion and possible transcendence.

Hogarth’s Patriotic Animals: Bulldogs, Beef, Britannia!

Scholars of art history, literary criticism and animal studies have paid considerable attention of late to how visual representations of animals have frequently and sometimes to great effect been deployed in the imagination of national identity. Though the broad backcloth of this chapter is woven from the engagement of these several disciplines with such images, its concern is limited to those that couple nationalism with carnivorism. This couplet has not yet been explored in sufficient detail or depth. The chapter’s particular focus and its sole instantiation of this couplet is how the irascible English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) deployed images of animals’ edible flesh—of ‘beef’, especially—in order to nourish a nascent national identity in eighteenth-century Britain.

Animal Sexual Assault

The chapter begins by discussing academic and legal definitions of animal sexual assault. It argues that, given that in effect animals are wards under our control and that they are unable to offer consent in forms that we can understand, all sexual advances towards animals should be seen as sexual assault. The extent of animal sexual assault is discussed. Studies have found that up to 35 % of adult populations have committed animal sexual assault, although we acknowledge that these findings should be treated cautiously, given their methodological limitations. Next, the literature on why humans engage in sexual activities with animals, including Beirne’s typology with its categories of adolescent sexual experimentation, aggravated cruelty, commercial exploitation and zoophilia, is critically reviewed. The chapter concludes by arguing for the development of reliable empirical research, pro-animal legislation and multi-strategy responses to animal sexual assault.

A note on quetelet and the development of criminological statistics

Abstract This Note clarifies several ambiguities in the claims that Salas and Surette (1984) have made about the Belgian criminologist Adolphe Quetelet. Specifically, it suggests that Quetelet (1) never articulated a concept of political relations or of the political state; (2) consistently rejected the need for ‘theoretical’ interpretation of empirical ‘data,’ (3) borrowed the notion of ‘statistique morale’ from French and German moral statisticians, and (4) vacillated between the poles of determinism and free-will philosophy.

Raw, roast or half-baked? Hogarth’s beef in Calais Gate

Scholars of human–animal studies, literary criticism and art history have paid considerable attention of late to how the visual representation of nonhuman animals has often and sometimes to great effect been used in the imagining of national identity. It is from the scrutinies of these several disciplines that the broad backcloth of this article is woven. Its focus is the neglected coupling of patriotism and carnism, instantiated here by its deployment in William Hogarth’s painting Calais Gate (1749). A pro-animal reading is offered of the English artist’s exhortation that it is in the nature of ‘true-born Britons’ to consume a daily dish of roast beef served with lashings of francophobia and anti-popery. The article suggests that alert contemporary viewers of Calais Gate would nevertheless have noticed that Hogarth’s painterly triumphalism ironically rekindles the repressed memory of English military defeat and territorial loss. Because the political and religious borders between England and France were so easily defaced and refaced, the accompanying air of uncertainty over national identity would also have infiltrated the perceived authenticity of English roast beef. The article draws on animal rights theory, on nonspeciesist green criminology and on green visual criminology in order to oppose the historical dominance of human interests over those of other animal species in discourses of abuse, cruelty and harm.

Introduction: Rights for Whom ?

This introduction summarizes how Murdering Animals crisscrosses the intersections of animal rights theory, criminology and the history of the fine and performing arts. It is the first text in any discipline to argue that if the killing of an animal by a human is as harmful to her as homicide is to a human, then the proper naming of such a death—‘theriocide’—offers a remedy, however small, to the extensive privileging of human lives over those of other animals. Whether the focus is on prose, painting, poetry or a play, each chapter addresses the killing of animals by humans, except for Chap. 6, the repeatedly threatening images of which unfold as the homicide of a father seemingly twice committed by his son. Though each of the chapters can stand alone, I hope it is not too fanciful to suggest that each also leads into the next and at strategic points dissects the others.