Steven Best
Encyclopedia
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
activist, author, talk-show host, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso
University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas at El Paso is a four-year state university, and is a component institution of the University of Texas System. Its campus is located on the bank of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas. The school was founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy,...
. He has been described as "one of the leading scholarly voices on animal rights."
Best is co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS), formerly known as the Center on Animal Liberation Affairs
Center on Animal Liberation Affairs
The Center on Animal Liberation Affairs is a scholarly center established to advance the study and discourse of animal liberation principles and practices....
(CALA), the first group dedicated to the philosophical discussion of animal liberation. His academic interests are continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, and environmental philosophy. He is the editor, with Anthony J. Nocella, of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (2004), which has a foreword by Ward Churchill
Ward Churchill
Ward LeRoy Churchill is an author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government...
, and the sister-companion volume on revolutionary environmentalism, Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (2006).
Best is best known for his post-structuralist notions of revolution, based equally in animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
and sexual liberation.
In December 2004, Best co-founded the North American Animal Liberation Press Office
Animal Liberation Press Office
Animal Liberation Press Offices relay anonymous communiques, photos and videos to the media about direct action undertaken by the Animal Liberation Front , Animal Rights Militia , Animal Liberation Brigade, Justice Department, and other leaderless resistance within the animal liberation movement...
, which acts as a media office for a number of animal rights groups, including the Animal Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
(ALF), though he has said that he is not himself an ALF activist. He came to public attention in 2005, when the British Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
told him it intended to use counter-terrorist
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
measures adopted in light of the July 2005 London bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
to prevent him from addressing an animal rights rally in the UK. Best responded by alleging that Britain was becoming a police state
Police state
A police state is one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population...
.
Education
After attending high school in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Best took casual jobs in factories and drove a truck for a few years. He attended the College of DuPage
College of DuPage
College of DuPage, or COD, is a two-year community college in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The college also owns and operates facilities in the Illinois communities of Addison, Bloomingdale, Carol Stream, Naperville, West Chicago, and Westmont...
(Illinois) from 1977 to 1979, where he completed an associate degree in film and theater; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
from 1979 to 1983, where he received a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
with distinction; the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
from 1985 to 1987 for his master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
; and the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
for his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
from 1989 to 1993.
In 1993, he began as an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso, promoted to Associate Professor in 1999, and then to the Chair of the Philosophy Department in 2002. His colleagues replaced him as Chair in March, 2005, an act which Best has alleged appeared to be a form of punishment for his outspoken activism on behalf of ethical causes such as animal and earth liberation that the academy has largely dodged to date.
Academic work
Best has written several books exploring postmodernism and its challenges to science. He takes a moderate approach in seeing benefits and flaws in both modernism and postmodernism. He has also produced papers on contemporary culture such as the film RoboCopRoboCop
RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop"...
, hiphop music, and H.G. Wells.
His most recent book is Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex (2010), co-edited with Peter McLaren
Peter McLaren
Peter McLaren is a Professor in the Division of Urban Schooling, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles . He is the author and editor of forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters...
and Anthony J. Nocella II.
Activism
Best sits on the advisory board of the International Journal of Inclusive DemocracyInclusive Democracy
Inclusive Democracy is a political theory and political project that aims for direct democracy, economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, self-management and ecological democracy...
. Often writing alongside Douglas Kellner
Douglas Kellner
Douglas Kellner is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Kellner was an early theorist of the field of critical media literacy and has been a leading theorist of media culture generally...
, Best relates his animal rights and environmental advocacy to issues of democracy, socialism and human rights. He is a supporter of direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
, as are most editors of the journal.
Banned from the UK
Best was threatened with a ban on entering Britain in 2004, when he planned to attend an animal rights conference, but he was able to argue successfully that banning him from arguing in favor of property destruction in certain circumstances would be akin to banning Peter SingerPeter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
for supporting euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
and infanticide
Infanticide
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
.
In 2005, Best planned to attend a rally to celebrate the closure, as a result of protests from the animal rights movement, of Newchurch Farm
Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs
Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs was a six-year campaign by British animal rights activists to close a farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire that bred guinea pigs for animal research...
, where guinea pigs were being bred for research purposes. Charles Clarke
Charles Clarke
Charles Rodway Clarke is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Norwich South from 1997 until 2010, and served as Home Secretary from December 2004 until May 2006.-Early life:...
, the British Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
, said he would rely on new Home Office rules preventing people from enter the UK if they "foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in further of particular beliefs; seek to provoke others to terrorist acts; foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts."
In a letter to Best dated August 24, 2005, Clarke cited a comment by Best quoted by The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
: "We are not terrorists, but we are a threat. We are a threat both economically and philosophically. Our power is not in the right to vote but the power to stop production. We will break the law and destroy property until we win." Best is also alleged to have said that the animal rights movement did not want to "reform" vivisectionists but to "wipe them off the face of the earth."
The letter from the Home Secretary said:
In expressing such views, it is considered that you are fomenting and justifying terrorist violence and seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts and fomenting other serious criminal activity and seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts." The letter was dated the same day that the Home Office published its new list of behaviors that would see people banned from the UK. Under the list, people who write, speak, run a website, or use their positions as teachers to express views that "foment, justify, or glorify violence in furtherance of particular beliefs" will be banned or deported. The British government called the new measures part of its "ongoing work to tackle terrorism and extremism."
Best responded to the ban by saying it didn't surprise him. He told the Chronicle of Higher Education: "It was only a matter of time, especially after the July 7, 2005 London bombings. The climate in Britain is totally unbelievable. It's very fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. It's becoming a police state." Best continues to argue that the ALF and the ELF are counter-terrorist groups, contrary to the US government's listing of these as terrorist organizations.
Books
- Best, Steven, Nocella, Anthony J., & McLaren, Peter Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex , AK PressAK PressAK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...
, 2010. ISBN 978-1-904859-98-7 - Best, Steven and Nocella, Anthony J. Igniting A Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth, AK PressAK PressAK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...
, 2006. ISBN 1-904859-56-9 - Best, Steven, and Nocella, Anthony J. Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals. Lantern BooksLantern BooksLantern Books is an American book publisher since 1998, first located in Union Square , and now with offices in Brooklyn. It "publishes books for all wanting to live with greater spiritual depth and commitment to the preservation of the natural world." The subject areas that Lantern Books covers...
, 2004. ISBN 1-59056-054-X - Steven Best and Douglas KellnerDouglas KellnerDouglas Kellner is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Kellner was an early theorist of the field of critical media literacy and has been a leading theorist of media culture generally...
. The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium. Guilford, June 2001. ISBN 978-1-57230-665-3 - Best, Steven. The Politics of Historical Vision: Marx, Foucault, Habermas, Guilford 1995. ISBN 978-1-57230-145-0
- Best, Steven and Kellner, Douglas. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, Guilford 1991. ISBN 978-0-89862-412-0
- Best, Steven and Kellner, Douglas. The Postmodern Turn, Guilford 1991. ISBN 978-0-89862-412-0
- Best, Steven. Animal Rights and Moral Progress: The Struggle for Human Evolution. (forthcoming)
Essays & articles
- Steven Best, "The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education," State of Nature (summer 2009).
- Steven Best, "Minding the Animals: Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism," The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2009).
- Steven Best, "Crisis Culture and the Waning of Revolutionary Politics," The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 3, No. 4 (October 2007). [This article is a pre-publication from Global Capitalism and the Demise of the Left: Renewing Radicalism through Inclusive Democracy; An abridged version of this article was published in Volume 3 No 2 of this journal.]
- Steven Best, "The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act: New, Improved, and ACLU Approved," The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 2007).
- Steven Best, "Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left," The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol.2, No.3 (June 2006).
- Kellner, Douglas and Best, Steven, "Dawns,Twilights, and Transitions: Postmodern Theories, Politics, and Challenges", Democracy & NatureDemocracy & NatureDemocracy & Nature was a theoretical journal founded in 1992 by Takis Fotopoulos. Initially launched as Society and Nature, it was renamed Democracy & Nature in 1995. Four volumes of three issues each were released by Aigis Publications in the period from 1992 to 1999. From 1999 to 2003, five...
: The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 2001).
See also
- Animal Liberation FrontAnimal Liberation FrontThe Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
(ALF) - Animal Liberation Press OfficeAnimal Liberation Press OfficeAnimal Liberation Press Offices relay anonymous communiques, photos and videos to the media about direct action undertaken by the Animal Liberation Front , Animal Rights Militia , Animal Liberation Brigade, Justice Department, and other leaderless resistance within the animal liberation movement...
- Center on Animal Liberation AffairsCenter on Animal Liberation AffairsThe Center on Animal Liberation Affairs is a scholarly center established to advance the study and discourse of animal liberation principles and practices....
(CALA) - Earth Liberation FrontEarth Liberation FrontThe Earth Liberation Front , also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".The ELF was founded...
(ELF) - American philosophyAmerican philosophyAmerican philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- List of American philosophers
- Critical animal studiesCritical animal studiesCritical Animal Studies is a term increasingly used by a wide range of academic groups who variously link it to what is otherwise known as "Animal Studies" , "Human-Animal Studies" , or "Posthumanism." Yet, there are key differences in terms of the ideological and methodological approaches to...
(CAS)