ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the performance politics of resilience and transformation enacted by The Save Movement – a global network consisting of animal rights activist groups that organise community vigils at farm animals en route to slaughter. Drawing on the Hegelian concept of plasticity as reworked by Catharine Malabou, I highlight some of the complexities that characterise animal rights interventions, by which I analyse the mode of performance upon which they are being carried out. By identifying the radical potential of plasticity in The Save Movement interventions, I propose a rethink of the place and identity of killable animal life, which I conceive as plastic arguing that from their destruction plastic animals are capable of effecting profound radical change.