Abstract
In this paper, we examine the possibility of interspecies political agency at the level of social movements. We ask to what extent animals and humans can be co-participants in one another’s liberation from oppression. To do so, we assess arguments for and against including animals in the ‘total liberation package’, taken as the liberation from oppressive societal structures. These are not pragmatic-political arguments, but conceptual-philosophical arguments that have been put before animal liberationists attempting to ‘piggy-back’ on human liberation movements. In discrediting these philosophical arguments, we argue that animals have capacities for self-liberation that humans can facilitate and that animals, in turn, can facilitate human liberation. As such, we defend the coherence of a total liberation package linking all oppression and all liberation, animal and human. We further argue that the rhetoric of total animal/human liberation performs a vital function in creating unity and solidarity between otherwise disparate and fragmented social justice movements.
Recommended Citation
Allen, Michael P. and von Essen, Erica
(2020)
"Interspecies Political Agency In The Total Liberation Movement,"
Between the Species:
Vol. 23:
Iss.
1, Article 7.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol23/iss1/7