Tomorrow
the UMass Law Review will ceremoniously launch its volume 14. Included therein is a deep, thought-provoking work on animal rights and welfare by Barnaby McLaughlin, '19, himself
a teacher in the English Department at Rhode Island College. The paper, "A Conspiracy of Life: A Posthumanist Critique of Appoaches to Animal Rights in the Law," is
available online from the law review. I'm proud to say I was a reader on this project, though it was decidedly one of those I-got-more-than-I-gave scenarios. I'll take my Ph.D now, please. Here is the abstract.
Near the end of his life, Jacques Derrida, one of the most
influential philosophers of the twentieth century, turned his attention
from the traditional focus of philosophy, humans and humanity, to an
emerging field of philosophical concern, animals. Interestingly,
Derrida claimed in an address entitled The Animal That Therefore I Am that,
since I began writing, in fact, I believe I have dedicated
[my work] to the question of the living and of the living animal. For me
that will always have been the most important and decisive question. I
have addressed it a thousand times, either directly or obliquely, by
means of readings of all the philosophers I have taken an interest in. .
. .
Derrida’s insistence that the question of the animal has always been
the focus of his work reflects an interesting turn in philosophy at the
end of the twentieth century, where the primacy of the human was
rightfully being challenged, and the lives of animals were being
considered on their own terms. Increasingly, the shift in focus from the
primacy of the human to a more thoughtful consideration of animals has
moved outside of just philosophy into other academic fields. These
developments have been reflected in the emerging interdisciplinary field
of posthumanism. Posthumanism, inclusive of all disciplines, seeks to
shed the legacy of liberal humanism and the primacy of the human and
instead consider all the interests of those that the human shares the
world with (including animals, plants, technology, et cetera). Curiously
however, while posthumanism has had an impact in most disciplines,
outside of a few scholars, it is absent in the legal field (both in
academia and in practice). Where the status of animals in the law has
been challenged, it has largely been done through arguments derived from
the legacy of liberal humanism. The two most significant challenges to
the status of animals in the law have been mounted by the Nonhuman
Rights Project in the United States, and the Great Ape Project, which
has primarily been successful in New Zealand and Spain. Both projects
have sought to expand legal rights to hominids, though each has adopted
different strategies. The Nonhuman Rights Project has sought to use
arguments within existing legal paradigms to force the courts to
recognize chimpanzees as “persons,” whereas the Great Ape project has
intentionally avoided court (for fear of setting unfavorable precedents)
and favored pressing change through legislation. Ultimately however,
both projects are thoroughly rooted in liberal humanism and advance
their arguments through proximity claims—the idea that certain animals,
in these cases, apes, deserve legal consideration because of their
similarity to humans.
This paper is an interdisciplinary comparative analysis of the
Nonhuman Rights Project’s failures in the United States and the Great
Ape Project’s success in New Zealand. The success of the legislative
approach of the Great Ape Project demonstrates the need to approach
these arguments outside of the courtroom to avoid hostile judges,
philosophical legacies, and archaic precedents. However, the Great Ape
Project does not go far enough in expanding the rights of other beings
as it relies on emphasizing similarities with humans as the sole reason
for extending rights, leaving other beings, even higher order mammals
like dolphins, without inclusion— and a real possibility that any such
inclusion would forever be cut off. Therefore, this paper proposes the
need for a posthumanist foundation for pursuing the rights of other
beings through legislative means.