Nonviolence, Solidarity, and Animals

Description:

Debates in contemporary solidarity studies revolves around whether political solidarity can take place directly *with* or only *on behalf of* more-than-human beings. Sally Scholz, for instance, argues that political solidarity is inherently human and cannot occur in true community with plant- or animal- others due to the latter’s lack of cognitive and communicative capacities necessary for forming subjective commitments. On the flip side, Chaone Mallory, drawing upon ecofeminist Val Plumwood's analyses—suggests that interspecies political solidarity rooted in dialogical communication is possible.

In spite of this apparent either/or difference, both of these secular accounts of political solidarity take for granted the Western presupposition of a subjective and separative self with its cognitive reliance on the “I think” as the base of knowing, action, and thought. In doing so, they overlook long-standing religious insights that offer possibilities, not only for solidarity *with* and *on behalf of* simultaneously, but also an alternate third option of solidarity *as* other beings through *un*selfing cosmic merger.

In this paper I look to the pan-South Asian concept of nonviolence (*ahiṃsā*) toward all living beings. While “solidarity” is not a technical term in ancient Indian traditions, the subcontinent has been characterized by distinct, if uneven, practices of nonviolent coexistence for millennia. Expressed most clearly in the Jain tradition and its radical mendicant and lay practices of multispecies nonviolence, I briefly explore the Jaina cosmo-logic—which links worldview, knowing, and doing as co-emergent phenomena—to explore a way beyond the *with* and *on behalf of* dichotomy.

First, the Jain account of universal sentience with karmic difference offers a foundation for solidarity *with* other beings who are at once bodily/temporally distinct from and ontologically equivalent to oneself.

Second, and simultaneously, the Jain account of reciprocal suffering and responses of carefulness (Skt: *apramatta*) and compassion (Skt: *anukampā/kāruṇya*)—both technical terms in early Jain texts and in later systematic philosophy—offers a foundation for solidarity *on behalf of* other beings.

Third, through its account of rebirth memory as well as the established (but optional) practice of fasting from food and water as death nears, the Jain view offers a foundation for solidarity presently missing in contemporary subject-centric accounts of political solidarity: that of solidarity *as* other beings. These practices of cosmic merger facilitate modes of *un*selfing and *un*knowing toward an omni-perceptive state beyond fixed subjectivity and thought. Whether in a momentary glimpses of rebirth memory in other vulnerable embodiments, or possibly permanent states of liberation such as *nirvāṇa* or *mokṣa*(which, since they are beyond dualistic representation escape easy description in South Asian accounts), one loses the ego-centered “I think” and the related binaries of self/other, mind/body, human/animal, among others—for a perceptive-epistemic merger into cosmic multiplicity.

Importantly—and perhaps counter-intuitively—the Jain tradition maintains these various multispecies orientations—of *with*, *on behalf of*, and *as*—while also preserving a keen sense of anthropocentric privilege that diverges from other global forms of hierarchical humanism. Namely, in the Jain view: (a) the human birth state is not fixed but continuously susceptible to and dependent on karmic rebirth in other forms, and (b) the human birth state can only occur and reach its fullest expressions through practices of nonviolent restraint toward all embodied beings. As Jain scholar Anne Vallely explains, “human birth is celebrated because it can transcend embodied ‘animal’ life, but human privilege is only established through a fraternal *solidarity* with it” (2018, 15, emphasis added).

Ultimately, contemporary debates in political solidarity with more-than-human beings are limited by their dependence on a secular presumption of a subjective self encountering the world through ego-representations of the “I think” and its resultant binaries. South Asian accounts of nonviolence, most notably demonstrated by the ancient Jain tradition, provide cosmo-logical accounts not only of experiencing solidarity *with* and *on behalf of* but also offer practices of cosmic merger by which to experience solidarity *as* other beings. These religious insights offer a needed component of ontological *un*selfing and epistemic *un*knowing capable of grounding the most radical and risky practices of multispecies solidarity today.