| Abstract [eng] |
Although non-human animal oppression is still normalized and flourishes in both our everyday non-discursive and discursive practices, new antagonisms, such as animal rights and liberation movements, seek to question and dismantle this oppression in both the public and political fields. In turn, various interest groups, increasingly pressured toward the discursive margins, respond to this challenge by mobilizing new articulatory practices aimed at maintaining their power positions within the discursive field. This study seeks to contribute to the less developed strand of critical animal and media studies by documenting and analyzing these reactions and the articulations of animal-oppressive discourse under conditions of intensified pressure from new antagonisms. The paper analyzes the case of the ban on fur farms in Lithuania, in order to understand how fur farmers and politicians who support them construct discourse and what attitudes supporting animal oppression are reproduced. The study analyzed the discourse of fur industry representatives and politicians who did not support the ban from November 2021 to May 2025 timeframe. The critical discourse analysis allowed the identification of seven discursive strategies with which discourse producers seek to maintain unequal power relations over animals. Three of these strategies – naturalization, rhetoric of concern, delegitimization of animal advocates and political institutions – correspond to discursive strategies identified in the academic literature examining Western European cases and confirm that these are universal and recognizable in the Lithuanian case as well, particularly in the context of proposing and adopting an industry ban. At the same time, the context of proposing and adopting an industry ban gives rise to additional discursive strategies that have not been conceptualized in the existing academic literature – rational criticism, intimidation, redirection of responsibility and (self)victimization – thus enabling the identification of a framework of opportunistic discursive action. The strategies revealed the aim of restricting who may participate in discourse, hollowing the concept of animal welfare and argumentative lines of reasoning from external ethical and moral implications. The study further confirms the set of attitudes supporting animal oppression identified in the academic literature, allowing the conclusion that animal oppression is not grounded in a single ideological line but rather sustained by a multifaceted constellation of attitudes. Anthropocentric speciesist attitudes frame animals as morally inconsiderable and support a hierarchical human-animal relationship. In parallel, capitalist attitudes position animals as productive resources, and the disruption of existing norms is perceived as a threat to the capitalist order. Importantly, the efforts to maintain a position of power over animals are fundamentally related to the exclusion of groups, mainly women, who stand in solidarity with animals and are pushed into the background as subordinated “others”. This not only constrains the possibilities of advocacy, but also marginalizes women as actors lacking decision-making power, pointing to the persistence of patriarchal attitudes in both animal agriculture and politics as a shared source of animal and women’s oppression. Finally, the study contributes to revealing multilayered, intersectional mechanism of oppression – attempts to silence animal rights defenders (most often women) simultaneously function to silence animals too. The expression of the attitudes implies that even after the adoption of the ban, tension remains regarding the meaning attributed to non-human animal and their position in society, with continued efforts to sustain unfavorable consideration of other animal species. |
