The Vegan and the Sovereign
Year: 2016
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (first published in 1968), everyone is a vegan. Yet, for some odd reason, nobody talks about it. People do, however, talk a lot about animal ethics and extinction. The novel is set in a time some decades after World War Terminus, a nuclear war that irradiated the planet, leading to a great dying off of animals (plants are not mentioned much—this is not a realist novel). The novel is famous for its humanoid androids, who were built off planet but have managed to make their way to Earth illegally and must be destroyed before they settle in as human imposters. But in a parallel plot, the Earth’s ecology has been so devastated that there are extremely few animals left, and this has several consequences: no one ever eats meat; empathy toward animals is the utmost social value; there is a booming trade in mechanical animals; and owning animals—whether living or robotic—has become the highest status symbol.
Author: Joshua Schuster
Institution: Western University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2519787911