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Opposing Scientific Cruelty: The Emotions and Sensitivities of Protestors against Experiments on Animals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2014

CHRISTOPHE TRAÏNI
CHRISTOPHE TRAÏNI*
Affiliation:
Institut d’Études Politiques, 25 Rue Gaston de Saporta, 13625 Aix-en-Provence, France; christophe.traini@wanadoo.fr
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Abstract

After a marked decline, protests against cruelty to animals in scientific experiments acquired fresh momentum from the middle of the twentieth century onwards. This article sets out to show that the analysis of emotions and sensitivities is best able to account for the similarities and differences between historically distant mobilisations. While late twentieth-century activists have revived an emotional register invented by their precursors of the previous century, the meaning they attribute to their revolt has been profoundly transformed by sensitivities that derive from a very different social status and a different range of affective experiences.

Les protestations contre les cruautés de la science: émotions et sensibilités des opposants à l’expérimentation animale

Après avoir connu un net repli, les mouvements de protestation contre les cruautés de la science à l’égard des animaux connaissent, à partir de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, une nouvelle phase de développement. Cet article s’applique à montrer dans quelle mesure la prise en compte des émotions et des sensibilités permet de mieux rendre compte des similarités et des différences entre ces mobilisations historiquement distantes. Alors même que les activists de la fin du XXe réactualisent un registre émotionnel inventé par les précurseurs de la fin du XIXe, la signification qu’ils prêtent à leur révolte est profondément renouvelée du fait des sensibilités qu’ils doivent à des statuts sociaux et expériences affectives fort différents.

Gegen grausamkeit im namen der wissenschaft: gefühle und empfindungen von tierversuchsgegnern

Nach einem deutlichen Rückgang gewannen Proteste gegen Tierquälerei im Rahmen von wissenschaftlichen Versuchen seit der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts wieder an Dynamik. Dieser Beitrag will zeigen, dass sich Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede bei der Mobilisierung von Tierversuchsgegnern in verschiedenen historischen Perioden am besten durch eine Analyse ihrer Gefühle und ihrer Empfindungen erklären lassen. Zwar knüpften Tierschützer im späten 20. Jahrhundert an das von ihren Vorläufern im 19. Jahrhundert entwickelte emotionale Register an, doch die Bedeutung, die sie ihren Protesten beimaßen, wandelte sich grundlegend. Dieser Wandel war letztlich auf die veränderten Empfindungen der Tierversuchsgegner zurückzuführen, das durch einen vollkommen anderen sozialen Status und unterschiedliche affektive Erfahrungen geprägt war.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 23 , Issue 4: Emotions in Protest Movements in Europe since 1917 , November 2014 , pp. 523 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Between 2005 and 2011 I arranged 68 interviews with activists representing 34 separate organisations. Thirty-five of these interviews were conducted by me; the rest by a team of four PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher in political science, Blancaneaux Romain, Emperador Badimon Montserrat, Franquemagne Gael, Kumeda Maryna, Lejeune Caroline, Renou Gildas.

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20 Bulletin de la Société Française contre la Vivisection, 4 (1886), BNF, microfilm M-4960, 32.

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22 Even in France, in 1884, no fewer than seven of the thirty Directors of the Société Française contre la Vivisection were titled individuals. Bulletin de la Société Française contre la Vivisection, 2 (1884), BNF, microfilm M-4960, 52.

23 Émilie Dardenne, ‘France Power Cobbe (1822–1904): militante victorienne: Deux causes un engagement’, Thèse d’Anglais, Université de Rennes-II, 2003, 213.

24 Bulletin de la Société Française contre la Vivisection (4), 1886, BNF, microfilm M-4960, 23.

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33 Christophe Traïni, ‘Témoigner de l’immersion dans l’horreur: Un dispositif de sensibilisation au service d’une cause militante’, paper read at a conference entitled ‘En Immersion’, Centre de Recherches sur l’Action Politique en Europe (CRAPE), Institut d’Études Politiques de Rennes, Nov. 2013.

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40 In the nineteenth century, these two types of preoccupation were linked to quite different types of activism and to different emotional registers. See my La Cause animale.

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46 Interview 20, male, age 34, activist in Protection des Animaux de Ferme, Paris, June 2008.

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