Turning to animal agency in the anthropocene

Abstract

Agency is central to humans’ individual rights and their organization as a community. Human agency is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through guaranteed rights, such as the right to life, basic education, freedom of expression, and the freedom to form personal relationships, which all protect humans from tyranny and oppression. Though studies of animal agency consistently suggest that we grossly underestimate the capacity of animals to make decisions, determine and take action, and to organize themselves individually and as groups, few have concerned themselves with whether and how animal agency is relevant for the law and vice versa. Currently, most laws offer no guarantee that animals’ agency will be respected, and fail to respond when animals resist the human systems that govern them. This failure emerges from profound prejudices and deep-seated anthropocentric biases that shape the law, including law-making processes. Law and law-making operating exclusively as self-judging systems is widely decried and denounced—except in animal law. This chapter identifies standpoint acknowledgement as a means to dismantle these tendencies, and provides instructions on how to ask the right questions. It concludes by calling for an “animal agency turn” across disciplines, to challenge our assumptions about how we ought to organize human-animal relationships politically and personally, and to increase our civic competence and courage, empathy, participation, common engagement, and respect for animal alterity.