Paper short abstract:

My ethnographic engagement with animal right activists in Montreal led me to discover the role of digital technologies in adopting this way of life. Using postphenomenology, I explore how these technologies mediate their relations with suffering animals and act in ways that escape their awareness.

Paper long abstract:

The last twenty years or so have seen a boom in the animal rights movement, which led notably to the ban of the horse-drawn carriage industry in Montreal in 2019. The increasing number of adherents to this cause is generally understood in terms of moral progress. To explore how people actually join the cause, I conducted ethnography with animal rights activists, including spending time at public demonstrations such as the Cube of Truth and through interviews. Activists explained their ethical transformation through the work of reason, intention and morality, as well as being touched by the suffering of animals. However, I also discovered the very important presence of digital technologies – screens, internet, social media, documentaries and algorithms – being used both as a way to persuade others and in activists’ stories of ethical transformation. To make sense of this, I turned to the burgeoning field of postphenomenology – including notably the work of Peter-Paul Verbeek, Kirk M. Besmer and Bas de Boer – to analyze how experience is mediated by particular technologies. I became particularly interested in postphenomenologists’ recent interest in “technological intentionality” and how technologies shape us through their “passive” activity as discussed by Dmytro Mykhailov and Nicola Liberati. Postphenomenology helps understanding how digital infrastructure mediate the ethical transformation of activists in relation to animals in ways that often escape their awareness. Finally, given the increasing presence of digital technologies in anthropology’s fieldworks, I will expand on the benefits of a new dialogue between anthropologists and postphenomenologists.