The Desubjectification of Animals

Matthew W. Perry (University of British Columbia)

This talk is online and free to attend.

It will occur on Thursday October 2, Noon Eastern. Note that the time displayed on PhilPapers events may not properly indicate the actual start time in your time zone. 

Please visit the SSEA's website for more information and link to attend.

Matthew Perry, The Desubjectification of Animals

ABSTRACT: Many of our social relationships with animals are shaped by how animals serve us: we breed and adopt pets for affection and intimacy, keep livestock for saleable goods, and house animals in zoos for entertainment. This paper argues that many such relationships can be morally objectionable by their very nature because they characteristically treat other animals as resources for satisfying human interests. I call this desubjectification: the social practice of relating to another individual as a resource rather than recognising her as a sentient being with her own subjective experiences. This mirrors the phenomenon of dehumanisation. Just as dehumanisation signals a failure to socially recognise another’s humanity, desubjectification demarcates a failure to recognise that an animal is a somebody.

Drawing on this concept, I develop a theory of how and why the human-animal social hierarchy―which privileges humans at the expense of animals―is wrongfully oppressive. While my primary aim is to characterise the nature of this wrong, I also gesture toward possible remedies and address some humanist political concerns. I conclude that desubjectification provides a broader account of dehumanisation that allows us to reject the oppressive ‘human’ and ‘animal’ categories in favour of the shared category of sentience.