Corinne Pelluchon // Who is the animal?

The discussion begins by addressing the fundamental question, "Who is the animal?" A primary point of emphasis is the necessity of using the plural, as the singular term 'the animal' masks three critical aspects of reality. This singular framing obscures the immense diversity and heterogeneity among existing species. Furthermore, it erases the crucial dimension of individuality, failing to recognize that every animal lives its own vulnerable life from a first-person perspective, rather than existing as an undifferentiated example of a species like cats, dogs, or cows.

While sentience—the capacity to experience pain and suffering—is one factor, agency is also present. Agency involves the ability to communicate interests and interact with others. Even if humans often fail to perceive or allow for this communication, the animal is actively engaging with its environment and its conspecifics. This active engagement means that basic needs, while linked to species norms, are modulated by individual biographies and preferences that the animal is capable of expressing.

Sentience, the capacity to experience pain and suffering, is one thing, but agency is also the capacity to communicate interests and express them.

The singular term also masks the historical construction of the concept 'animal' in direct opposition to another singular, problematic term: 'man.' This opposition framework prevents recognition of the lines of similarity and difference that exist between humans and animals, often leading to a biased study of animals from a purely human viewpoint.

A pervasive bias characterizes many approaches to animality, often subordinating respect for an animal to the possession of specific cognitive faculties once thought exclusive to humans. This bias leads to studying animals by comparing their capacities, constantly asking what an animal lacks compared to a human, or what one species possesses over others. This establishes a hierarchical scale with the 'normal' adult human at the apex, which ultimately proves to be an impasse because it merely projects human experience onto other forms of life, as Merleau-Ponty noted.

The focus shifts toward appreciating alterity—the positivity of difference—and the heterogeneity of access to reality. For instance, a bat or a dog does not shape the world exactly like a human, but they do shape it according to their relationship with their environment. This relationship, often precarious and changing, is meaningful and should not be reduced to mere deterministic reflexes. To understand this, thinkers must abandon the habit of classifying non-humans in terms of superior or inferior, using only what suits humanity as the absolute criterion for evaluation.

Acknowledging the heterogeneity of other forms of existence does not imply that humans share no specificities. Humans possess unique capacities, such as apprehending other life forms through knowledge that is highly distant from direct experience. Furthermore, responsibility constitutes a distinct human specificity. While animals can certainly exhibit empathy and identification with other sentient beings, responsibility demands a concept that exceeds mere identification with the creature immediately visible.

True responsibility requires considering those whose existence is affected by human behavior even when their faces are unseen. This concept demands a different approach than simple empathy. Moreover, an asymmetry exists between animals and humans that must be accounted for when establishing fair rules for cohabitation. Even though animals possess skills—like raising young—and communicate, they require humans to advocate for their interests in the public sphere, especially against exploitation or disregard for their individuality.

We are responsible for those whose faces we do not see. We are responsible for those who are affected by our modes of behavior.

Regarding rights, although the concept is a human invention, the starting point for conferring rights upon animals should perhaps be their inherent agency and what they are entitled to expect from humans. Merleau-Ponty referred to animals as 'other existences,' emphasizing that they are not merely driven by instinct but exert an 'effort of existence' to shape the world, even though they lack the key to understanding that world, leading to inherent precarity.

Animals function as crucial professors of alterity. The difficulty humans have in cohabiting with other existences—often only accepting them if they serve or please—reveals much about human limitations in relating to 'the other.' This relationship to alterity is central to the question of who the animal is, reflecting back upon human identity. This perspective moves beyond merely criticizing anthropocentrism, as figures like Derrida and Merleau-Ponty did, toward promoting a new humanism centered on alterity and diversity.

Drawing on Montaigne, it is asserted that affirming human dignity does not necessitate affirming animal indignity; often, what is labeled 'instinct' is merely an intelligence humans fail to comprehend. Claude Lévi-Strauss, influenced by Montaigne, warned that radically separating humanity from animality initiates a cursed cycle, as an egoistic humanism only grants rights to a shrinking minority of humans. This separation inherently contains the seeds of discrimination and racism.

The concept of speciesism, prevalent in early animal ethics movements of the 1970s in the United States, involved denouncing prejudices that justified violent practices against animals. Antispeciesism was not about erasing all differences, but arguing it was unjust to disregard the interests of sentient animals—for example, conducting painful experiments without anesthesia on an animal when that practice would be unthinkable for a human. Modern interpretations sometimes mistakenly turn this into an ideology demanding the erasure of all hierarchy, which deviates from the original focus on injustice.

The political question becomes how to determine rules for cohabitation that account for the interests of non-humans. Daily acts like eating or inhabiting are never solitary; they impact other living beings. Consequently, politics must expand beyond the classic social contract goals of reducing inequalities among humans to incorporate the biosphere and the interests of other lives.

The relationship with animals profoundly unveils human identity; it answers the question, 'Who am I?' by reflecting what one accepts doing to other sensitive beings daily. The animal cause is strategic because the widespread practices of industrial farming expose a model of development predicated on cheapening and unifying animals into production units. This relationship, which transforms living husbandry into mere production, imposes significant psychological and moral burdens on the humans involved in these processes.

Humans tasked with tasks like killing animals, often starting very young, are forced to employ psychological strategies such as denial to cope with the violence inherent in this system. This repression of negative emotions proves catastrophic psychologically and socially. The mass violence against animals, often disregarding their basic norms, mirrors a humanity that has allowed a development model whose social and environmental counter-productivity is now undeniable.

Articulating moral and political theory requires confronting justice, which concerns the limits assigned to human rights to use others as deemed fit. Injustice arises because basic animal needs—the need for space, subjective experience—are ignored, granting humans quasi-absolute sovereignty. A healthy democracy, however, must allow for the expression of differences and ensure minorities remain active forces capable of introducing perplexity and shifting norms without violence. Progress requires negotiating agreements, even when fundamental disagreements persist, such as those surrounding practices like bullfighting or hunting.

The cultural dimension involves education and a change in perspective, but it also touches upon the most archaic symbolic and affective registers. Relationships with animals engage the core of feeling and sensation. They act as professors of alterity, forcing humans to confront their own finitude, vulnerability, and mortality. This realization—that one belongs to a common world shared with vulnerable, mortal beings who desire flourishing—fundamentally changes one's desires and aspirations, making their flourishing a component of one's own.

What we do every day to animals is more than the test of a society; the injustice of our justice is the proof of a culture of death from which we must emerge.