Laura Brown: “Challenging the ‘Voiceless Animal’: Talking Dogs, Spiritualists and European Anti-Vivisection Campaigns, c. 1920–1940.”

Abstract:

Cases of ‘gifted’ animals gained enormous popularity in early twentieth-century Europe. Existing scholarship has considered the interest in animal cognition during this period within developments in psychology, or from the perspective of psychical researchers. This paper contributes to this literature by exploring a small group of Spiritualists who leveraged their belief in the cognitive and communicative abilities of animals in anti-cruelty arguments, particularly anti-vivisection campaigns.

The paper focuses on the alleged abilities of two dogs, Zou and Kurwenal, drawing from books and periodicals published by the humans who trained them, or otherwise promoted their talents in animal protection contexts. These examples are juxtaposed with other forms of campaign material published by animal protection societies of the same period, more specifically, appeals for donations written ‘by’ dogs in the first person. I argue that there is a fundamental difference between these two types of campaign material, in that the latter uses anthropomorphism to rouse public interest in animal welfare, while the former makes an earnest appeal to recognise the latent spiritual, emotional and intellectual potential in all animals. I also argue that such appeals represent an early attempt to disrupt the tendency to portray animals as ‘helpless’ and ‘voiceless’ in anti-cruelty arguments.