When Animals Speak. Eva Meijer
groups, or with regard to political participation of those non-human animals who are part of our societies. In this book, I discuss these and other questions concerning language and world, politics and activism, shared and sovereign communities, democracy and difference, in order to develop a theory of political animal voices.
From the Political Animal to Political Animal Voices
In political philosophy, the ability to speak is usually considered a necessary condition for being a political actor and for membership in the political community. Speaking is seen as a human enterprise, one that is clearly distinct from the way that other animals express themselves and use their voices. Being able to speak is seen as necessary for rational deliberation (Habermas 1981), for participation in a (hypothetical) social contract (Rawls 1971), for democratic action (Rancière 2007), for collective intentional action (Pepper 2016), and for other forms of political participation. The view that only humans are political actors has a long history. In Book I of The Politics, Aristotle defines man as political animal and the only animal that is endowed with speech, or rather logos, which here refers to rational speech, and more specifically the ability to distinguish between right and wrong in a speech act (Aristotle [350BC] 1991, 1253a, 10–18; Derrida 2011, 348). This capacity is necessary for being part of the political community. By attributing logos only to humans, he draws a line between humans and other animals. This line functions as a border around the political; only humans can be political animals. It also defines political speech: logos, meaning speech informed by reason, is contrasted with phonè, the sound of the voice, which can express pain or pleasure. Non-human animals have voices and express themselves, but they cannot speak in the proper sense because they cannot use their voices to decide between just and unjust; they do not have logos. What is furthermore important to note is that this move is made inside human language—Aristotle is using human words to argue that using human words is what draws the line between who can speak and who cannot, and between who can be a political actor and who cannot.4
Recent work in political philosophy challenges the idea that only humans are part of democratic communities (Cochrane, Garner, and O’Sullivan 2016), as well as the idea that only humans can be political actors (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011). Animal ethics has, at least since the work of Peter Singer (1975) and Tom Regan (1983), always been a political project, because it challenges the borders of the moral community and focuses on non-human animal rights. These new approaches draw more heavily on the vocabulary developed in political philosophy. They are united by a focus on justice, and on reformulating existing political institutions, practices, and structures to secure just human/non-human animal relations (Cochrane, Garner, and O’Sullivan 2016). Most political animal philosophers focus on including non-human animal interests in existing liberal democratic institutions (Cochrane 2012; Garner 2013; Rowlands 1997; O’Sullivan 2011).
Political philosophers Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka (2011) explicitly challenge the view that only humans can be political actors. They are not the first to draw attention to non-human animal agency and the importance of relations for, and between, humans and other animals5; Donaldson and Kymlicka are, however, the first to develop a political theory of animal rights based on the relations between groups of non-human animals and human political communities. A focus on political relations implies the need to think about political communication within and between communities. Other animals have languages and communicate, their voices can and should be seen as political—as constituents of or contributions to political processes—and humans can and should attend to and be responsive to these voices as part of a broader conception of interspecies democracy.
As mentioned above, the question of language, and animal voice, including the connection between language, reason, political agency, and political practices and institutions, has not yet received much attention in recent work on political animal philosophy, or animal ethics more broadly. Many animal rights theorists6 simply assume that other animals do not use language, cannot speak in a way that is relevant to political action, and are destined to stay silent in political and social matters. There are very few animal rights theorists who incorporate the current research on non-human animal, or interspecies, languages in their work, or who investigate how other animals can have a voice in questions that concern their lives in other ways. Activists and philosophers currently often see it as unavoidable that “we” should speak for “them.”7 This is unfortunate, given the strong connections between language and political action in the philosophical tradition and political practice, and given the fact that the political participation of other animals involves communicating with them. Language is an important tool in interacting and building common worlds with others. Furthermore, it glosses over the relationship between how our notions of “subject” and “language” are constructed in relation to logos or reason, and the exclusion of other animals. It is also unfortunate because it perpetuates a negative stereotype of other animals as mute, or incapable of speaking, and keeps intact an idealized view of the human and human language.
To challenge this, we need to develop a new understanding of language that can take into account the multitude of non-human animal expressions and ways of creating meaning, and that begins from the idea that other animals are beings who have their own perspective on life and their own ways of communicating this to others of their own and other species.
Animal Languages
Recent research in biology and ethology shows that many non-human animal species have their own complex and nuanced ways of communicating with members of their own and other species, including humans (chapter 2). Dolphins (King and Janik 2013) and parrots (Berg et al. 2011), for example, call each other by their names. African elephants use different alarm calls to distinguish between threats from bees and humans, as well as between different groups of humans (Soltis et al. 2014). Ravens use referential gestures (Pika and Bugnyar 2011). Fork-tailed drongos mimic the alarm calls of other species to scare them away so they can steal their dinner (Flower et al. 2014). We find grammatical structures, including recursion, in the songs of many species of bird (Gentner et al. 2006). The skin patterns of squid can be seen as a language built up of sentences that have a grammar (Moynihan 1991). Prairie dogs, a species of ground squirrel, describe humans in detail, including the color of their T-shirts and hair, the speed at which they are approaching, and objects they might be carrying (Slobodchikoff et al. 2009).
Humans have a long-shared history with many non-human animal species, which has influenced their capacities for understanding one another (chapter 3). Dogs and humans have, for example, co-evolved, and both species have influenced the characteristics of the other—some biologists even think that humans may have started to use language in relation to dogs (Haraway 2003). Research shows that humans can correctly interpret dog moods when they hear them bark or growl on tape or see their facial expressions; dogs can also read human sounds and faces (Hare and Woods 2013). When dogs and humans who are friends gaze into each other’s eyes they create oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone,” something that also happens between lovers, and parents and babies (ibid.).
In philosophy and biology, language has long been equated with human language. As I will discuss in more detail in chapter 1, many philosophers in the Western tradition have even seen language as a defining characteristic for humans. These empirical studies, along with the aforementioned developments in political philosophy and other fields of study that argue for the recognition of non-human animal subjectivity, challenge this view. They call for us to reconsider the cognitive, social, and linguistic capacities of other animals, and they also ask us to reconsider what language is. Humans do not know currently whether there are any non-human animal languages as complex as human language, neither do they currently understand the full meaning of many non-human animals’ expressions or the depth of form of interspecies communication. However, it is clear that the idea that only humans have language as informed by logos and that other animals do not is untenable. The insights obtained from recent studies compel us to think differently about non-human animal language, culture, and subjectivity, and perhaps more importantly, about how humans can