Maneesha Deckha

Bio: Maneesha Deckha is an academic researcher from University of Victoria. The author has contributed to research in topics: Anthropocentrism & Animal rights. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 20 publications receiving 304 citations. Previous affiliations of Maneesha Deckha include University of California & Indiana University.

Toward a Postcolonial, Posthumanist Feminist Theory: Centralizing Race and Culture in Feminist Work on Nonhuman Animals

Abstract: Posthumanist feminist theory has been instrumental in demonstrating the salience of gender and sexism in structuring human–animal relationships and in revealing the connections between the oppression of women and of nonhuman animals. Despite the richness of feminist posthumanist theorizations it has been suggested that their influence in contemporary animal ethics has been muted. This marginalization of feminist work—here, in its posthumanist version—is a systemic issue within theory and needs to be remedied. At the same time, the limits of posthumanist feminist theory must also be addressed. Although posthumanist feminist theory has generated a sophisticated body of work analyzing how gendered and sexist discourses and practices subordinate women and animals alike, its imprint in producing intersectional analyses of animal issues is considerably weaker. This leaves theorists vulnerable to charges of essentialism, ethnocentrism, and elitism despite best intentions to avoid such effects and despite commitments to uproot all forms of oppression. Gender-focused accounts also preclude understanding of the importance of race and culture in structuring species-based oppression. To counter these undesirable pragmatic and conceptual developments, posthumanist feminist theory needs to engender feminist accounts that centralize the structural axes of race and culture.

Disturbing Images: Peta and the Feminist Ethics of Animal Advocacy

Abstract: The author applies a feminist analysis to animal advocacy initiatives in which gendered and racialized representations of female sexuality are paramount. Feminists have criticized animal advocates for opposing the oppression of nonhuman animals through media images that perpetuate female objectification. These critiques are considered through a close examination of two prominent campaigns by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The author argues that some representations of female sexuality may align with a posthumanist feminist ethic and need not be read as sexist. Examining PETA’s famous anti-fur ads and the more recent Milk Gone Wild campaign, the author identifies where PETA’s campaigns are objectionable under a feminist ethic and where they are subversive of an anthropocentric and male-dominated order alike. The article thus recuperates part of PETA’s work from feminist critiques, but also reveals the constructions posthumanist advocacy should exclude to avoid elevating the status of nonhuman animals at the expense of women.

Pain as culture: A postcolonial feminist approach to S/M and women’s agency

Abstract: The interaction of gender, culture, race and sexuality is a central dynamic to this article, which seeks to move forward feminist debate on the benefits and harms of sadomasochist practices for women by applying the critical race and postcolonial method of world-travelling. The article seeks to make a novel contribution to the feminist analysis of consensual violence and sadomasochism in law by filtering the issue through a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework to productively circumvent the current analytical impasse in this area of feminist 'sex wars'.

Welfarist and Imperial: The Contributions of Anticruelty Laws to Civilizational Discourse

Abstract: This is a post-print version of this paper, published in American Quarterly, (2013) 65(3) pp. 515-548.

Vulnerability, Equality, and Animals

Abstract: The sameness logic inherent in many legal quests for equal treatment is objectionable for the differences that it suppresses. Scholars working in various critical orientations (such as queer, feminist, and critical race theories) have discussed how various equality-based campaigns for disadvantaged groups operate according to their own exclusionary premises. While this critique of equality advocacy's adverse effects on other Others is diverse and important, it leaves unexamined how non-humans are Othered by anthropocentric equality claims. Arguments about why animals matter typically measure animals against human metrics of ethical worth such as whether or not they possess a sufficient capacity to reason, suffer, emote, use language, make tools, or exhibit some other trait presumed to define what it means to be human. Post-humanist critiques can thus fortify, similar to the human equality discourses above, the very norms they seek to destabilize and displace. To properly impugn legal and other inequalitie...

What About Us

Abstract: Established in 2006, TATA Africa Services (Nigeria) Limited operates as the nodal point for Tata businesses in West Africa. TATA Africa Services (Nigeria) Limited has a strong presence in Nigeria with investments exceeding USD 10 million. The company was established in Lagos, Nigeria as a subsidiary of TATA Africa Holdings (SA) (Pty) Limited, South Africa and serves as the hub of Tata’s operations in Nigeria and the rest of West Africa.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

At the University of North Carolina

Abstract: Since beginning a tenure appointment, my research has focused on four research areas, all elements of the political tradecraft of leadership: bargaining, persuasion, operational routines, and managing subordinates. In each area, I have created new theory and brought these analytics closer to the actual practices of those who govern. I have also created innovative data resources on these core processes. This research moves the discipline closer to understanding political decision-making, innovates new theory, generates new data from “behind the scenes,” and focuses on the nature of politics. Because these activities reflect much more closely the actual practices of political leaders, contemporary leaders, both in the national government and abroad, find my scholarship useful and informative.