Animal Anxieties: A Postcolonial Analysis of Veganism in the Irish Discourse

Veganism, the eschewing of Nonhuman Animal production and consumption, promises to deliver a significant disruption to the nation-state's heavy dependence on the systematic exploitation of other animals. For precarious newly developed nation-states, this disruptiveness takes on another level of sociological relevance. First, economic reliance on other animals is often presumed mandatory for global participation and legitimacy. Second, citizens of these new nations are frequently overcoming the legacy of colonialist racialization, which characteristically animalizes subjects to justify their subjugation. Animal nationalism is an emerging field which presses the discipline to negotiate the importance of animality in defining national and cultural identities. Using Ireland as a case study, this article advances animal nationalism theory by positing that it is more than humanity's relationship with actual nonhumans that is at play in nation-building, but also the metaphorical relationship between humans and other animals, given their utility in maintaining human stratification systems.