veganarky

Alongside sporadic thoughts, on occasions I am asked what led me to become vegan. I had narrowed it down to a handful of memories which I think planted seeds and laid foundations for later coalescences, intersections. These are memories stretching back to my youth. I consider my first to come from watching the Australian film Storm Boy, released in 1976 (I can’t recall when I first saw the film, though it was quite a few after its release). Storm boy also exposed me to what might be my first recollections of Aboriginal people, and the immense talent of David …

I recently went to/participated in two (activist/academic and academic) conferences, and had some interesting conversations early on at the first of these reflecting on the state of activism around the animal question. There was a pre-conference public lecture/pre-book launch for the former which had a recurring theme that a focus on the ‘production’ of animals as commodities was far more important-interesting than on consumption practices. This theme came up in a conversation I had the today (during the first day of the activist/academic conference), with someone I respect who does quite a bi…

A recent post on One Green Plant by Leslie Irvine, a scoiologist at the University of Colorado, outlines three options for companion (nonhuman) animals, specifically related to what we feed them. Irvine provides her rationalisations to the ‘difficult position’ in the context of ‘ethical veganism’ (for me there is one form of veganism, and coming up with labels such as ethical is as problematic that for vegetarianism — see the redicularity of the term ‘pescatarian’ for example. To create a demarcation here, anyone who is not an ‘ethical vegan’ is not a vegan: they adopt a plant-based diet). Thr…

ome time 2007 I changed the design of this website to incorporate the sunflower image that has become the symbol of veganarky, of what it means to me. The image is of one of a small number of similar sculptures of sunflowers in Front Street, Toronto, Ontario (I have made some minor modifications to saturation and hue, and to remove any background). I have now found some words to describe part of what the image represents for me. As a starting point, the sunflower is an almost a universal symbol for and of veganism. Prior to using this image, I had made a mash…