데리다의 채식주의 비판과 에코페미니즘의 맥락적 채식주의 윤리

Abstract

This article aims to interpret the implications of the critique of vegetarianism in Derrida’s animal philosophy and to consider it alongside the contextual vegetarian/vegan ethics of ecofeminism in order to propose a new vegetarian ethics that is constantly renewed through critical dialogues. In the current trend of the posthuman or animal turn in the humanities and social sciences at home and abroad, Derrida’s late philosophy of the animal has attracted attention in that it strongly criticizes the anthropocentrism of existing Western philosophy and sharply problematizes the limit and relations between the human and the animal. However, Derrida’s “ambiguous” stance on vegetarianism, a practice that resists meat eating as the most common form of human-animal relationship in modern urban society, is little known in Korea. By introducing Derrida’s position on vegetarianism and the critical dialogues surrounding it, this article argues for a move away from the rule-based and universalist ethics that dominate academic discussions on the topic in Korea. It also seeks to provide a richer theoretical foundation for vegetarianism as a practice that puts the brakes on the global capitalist system that exhausts the lives of humans and nonhuman animals alike, through a connection to ecofeminist ethics that emphasizes the importance of context. In doing so, this study would go a step further than repeating the familiar and valid argument that vegetarianism is not an obligation, and argue that, at least in the specific context of the here and now, practicing vegetarianism as much as possible is “eating well.”