Animal History “From Below”
Animal as Constructed Other – In Which Space, Really?
Animal Rights Messel
Preliminary note: Our critique(s) are not directed at individual persons, but at a structural tendency within animal-ethical discourse, which is of course represented through concrete positions. In a society shaped in nearly all areas by speciesist and animal-objectifying self-evidences, it is not sufficient to fit animals into existing philosophical frameworks. As long as the societal legacy of animal objectification is not fundamentally addressed, there is a risk that new theories will merely produce compatible variations of the same framework. Our concern, therefore, is not the production of further “discursively acceptable models,” but the naming of simple yet fundamental asymmetries that are frequently overlooked in theoretical operations.
Theory as the Final Instance of Animal Objectification? Philosophical Localization of Animals as “Strangers”?
An animal rights philosopher formulates it implicitly as follows:
The human being is the normative holder of space.
The animal is the one who arrives – tolerated, perhaps even welcomed – within this space.
We consider such a structure problematic. For it presupposes that animals could appear as strangers in a world they inhabited evolutionarily long before human territorial politics. Whoever appears here as a “guest” is already inserted into an order of possession. Hospitality implies household sovereignty. Toleration implies priority. The metaphor betrays the hierarchy it claims to overcome.
The philosopher’s chosen approach draws on Kantian concepts of perpetual peace, hospitality, and the right of visitation, which Kant related to relations among human groups. It is understandable that animal rights theorists repeatedly seek philosophical legitimation in this way, but:
Kant as an Unquestioned Matrix?
Whoever today invokes Immanuel Kant to clarify urgent ethical questions can no longer do so in a mode of unquestioned authority. In debates on universalism, reason, hospitality, or cosmopolitan right, it is no longer acceptable to adopt philosophical authorities as normative matrices without disclosing their historical and structural preconditions.
Engagement with Kant’s racial theories has demonstrated that his universalism was not free from implicit hierarchizations. If this universalism must be critically decoupled in order to remain compatible with anti-racist critique, then the same applies to its transfer onto nonhuman animals.
Within the construct under discussion, attention must be given to the terms:
- Universalism
- Reason
- Otherness
- Hospitality
- Cosmopolitan right
These concepts emerged from a specifically human perspective [and under particular historical presuppositions]. They carry the exclusions of their time – including racist and speciesist structural assumptions. Why should a canonized mode of thought that historically treated animals as merely instrumental beings serve as the benchmark for animal-ethical justification?
The Methodological Difference
Here a structural asymmetry becomes visible. Human rights are not legitimized by first fitting humans into a philosophical matrix. No one seriously examines whether humans fulfill certain conditions in order to qualify as rights-bearers. In the case of animals, however, this is frequently exactly what occurs. First definition. Then categorization. Then evaluation.
What takes place is a triangulation that replaces immediacy between right and subject. In other words, conditionality displaces direct [relational] reference. This conditionality is constituted by:
- Human theory
- Human conceptual architecture
- The animal as an object of examination
This method reproduces objectification by denying direct relationality as the binding starting point for grounding rights.
The animal does not appear as an immediately affected counterpart, but as a case within a system. His/her recognition depends on whether he/she fits predefined categories.
If human rights were treated in the same way, one would first have to evaluate whether humans meet certain theoretical criteria. The absurdity of this idea reveals the methodological difference [degradation, devaluation, and fragmentation of relationality] and exposes how a biologistic pre-structuring functions as a narrowing prejudice shaping thought about animal concerns.
Epistemic Property
In approaches already to be considered “classical,” animals are not taken as the starting point, but are integrated. They are included, expanded, taken into account. Yet they are understood within a framework that does not originate from them, because the foundational objectification is not doubted as a “truth” nor as the real starting point for designating the subject one seeks to approach. Thus animals become a form of philosophical property – not materially, but conceptually and philospohically. Their existence is administered through “human theory.”
Point of Departure: Real Objectification
The decisive question is not: Which theory can adequately classify animals?
But rather: How do we end real objectification?
Real objectification manifests in:
- Industrial, ritual, and eclectically practiced killing and injury
- Legal status as objectifiable entities
- Modes of instrumentalization
- Habitat destruction, and the denial of habitat rights, for which humans interpret their own communal criteria as prerequisites for legitimate claim
Animal rights cannot primarily be constructed from canonical vehicles. They must proceed from immediate animal realities and the concrete conflict situations between human-hegemonic power and animal existence.
Not toleration. Not hospitality within a framework defined by those who exercise power and violence. Not integration into the existing system. Rather, the revision of the systems themselves would constitute an interruption of this vicious circle. We consider the claim that disruption within discourse is impossible to be a constructed intellectual prejudice. As long as prevailing theories refuse to cross certain thresholds, no transformation of conceptual norms within society can begin – in a society where animal-objectifying language operates on multiple levels.
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