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Maneesha Deckha is a law professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Her work initially spanned human rights, injustice, feminist theory, post-colonial & decolonial theory and later, inter-species justice and its links and intersectionality with human social justice. Maneesha founded and directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University. She is the author of the book “Animals as Legal Beings”.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better future?”
Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the YouTube and Spotify above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.
00:00 Clips!
00:55 Welcome
– Maneesha on The Animal Turn and Think Like a Vegan podcasts hosted by:
– Claudia Hirtenfelder Sentientism episode
– Emilia Leese Sentientism episode
03:05 Maneesha’s Intro
– “To consider how different oppressions for different groups, both human and animal and even other non-humans, are systemically structured and are related and overlap – and also how they might be different”
– Working long before and since the “Animal Turn” in academia “when not too many people were discussing animals”
– Research: animals legal subjectivity, animal ethics, feminist perspectives “connecting work… looking at issues of gender, race, culture, species in tandem”
– “Addressing questions that affect women, that affect children, that affect animals – through that intersectional lens”
– Starting and Directing the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University
– Public facing projects e.g. the “A Deeper Kindness” documentary
06:55 What’s Real?
– Growing up in a Hindu household… celebrations, stories
– The radical diversity of Hinduism “all these gods and goddesses and quite a few of them are multi-species… Lord Ganesh”
– University courses on Hinduism and Buddhism
– “I always looked at that… as myth”
– The ethos of learning… being introduced to modernist, scientific & secular views
– “I approached the world in a more secular, atheist frame… atheist understood as being compatible with Hinduism… not really believing in these gods and goddesses but somewhat happy that these stories are there… the diversity of thought that it brings up”
– “When we have a physical sensation or emotional sensation that it’s real… that pain is real… that suffering is real even if it’s psychological”
– Learning about social construction and the influence of language at university “we cannot access… reality… without mediating that access through concepts, through language”
– “We can’t really know something 100% for certain… because it depends on how we frame it on the interiority of our mind which of course almost always depends on language”
– Becoming a mother “I had biological & inter-relational experiences with my infant & also while pregnant that I felt weren’t based on language” so had “a personal experience of contesting what I had so naturally and quickly imbibed doing university studies”
– Pain scholars: “pain just eludes language”… “has made me be so responsive to pain not just in myself but in others – regardless of whether one is human or not”
– That response motivating an interest in human social justice issues, “then those outside of the human category and the pain and suffering they are experiencing”
– “I am very sensitive and it affects me deeply when someone is in pain and suffering”
– “The pain and suffering that flows from the violence that is so ubiquitous in society against animals and others is real… and we don’t need language to say that that’s is real but the language we use to process it of course affects how we think about it and respond to it”
– “A prime example right now is the situation of the atrocities in Gaza”
– “Animals that we don’t see what is going on… they are being killed as we’re speaking… because we use language to mediate that type of violence so we don’t see it”
– “As a younger person just out of university I would have said social construction is 100% of everything… now I wouldn’t take that view…”
– “While of course positionality is important it is not the end all be all… we shouldn’t judge perspectives solely by whoever’s saying it… their lived experience must be just because of an identity… or even take lived experience as the end all be all of truth or a way forward on a particular issue… It just results quickly into conflict and stalemate”
– Integrating non-human animals into our politics and law: “There’s always going to be some inability to have an animal position because we are human… we need to be able to tolerate humans speaking for animals even as much as that is problematic”
– “A strong position on saying that only someone with a particular life experience can speak about something is not helpful at the same time… the claim to objectivity is also not helpful”
– Claims of neutrality (e.g. Universities re: encampments and protests) “that is also not really advancing… any de-escalation or resolution or negotiation…”
– JW: Problems of claiming neutrality is: 1) My position, 2) An amoral stance, 3) Taking a central position between two opinions
– “How to integrate plurality but then when to make a decision and how to respond and disagree”
– Feminist analysis. Jennifer Nedelsky drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt “what is judicial objectivity?”
– Teaching about a supreme court case in Canada re: judicial bias “the task of judging… is not to agree with everyone… it’s not to deny that we have some type of social positionality… it is rather to listen to the different perspectives and then make a decision being responsive to those perspectives… where you know you’re going to disappoint… in your reasoning – to explain why… reasonable reasons… rather than hanging on to a myth of objectivity.”
– “How to have a collective decision… this is very hard to do especially as more and more public debate has become so uncivil and vicious… lacking compassion or empathy”
– “As a professor – I need to model this to the younger generation”
– “… a culture shaped by social media… students are reluctant to speak on anything that’s remotely controversial let alone anything that really is controversial… not for fear of how their grade is going to be affected… but out of… a real fear of what’s going to happen to them… on social media or in the hallways… this is a real problem in education.”
– “I would never endorse relativism for any type of question of justice… injustice is something real… the challenge of course is in the different perspectives of what counts as injustice”
26:30 What Matters?
– Justice, pain, suffering, empathy, compassion…?
– “As a child probably the largest ethical notion I had was to be nice and be kind to other children… to be polite and respectful to adults and elders”
– “That developed into a sense of injustice in middle school and then high school… seeing a lot of images of children starving in other countries”
– “That image always stuck with me… that’s so awful… I feel so sad… I’m so lucky.” Watching LiveAid
– Undergraduate studies “this real concern about disparities between the Global North and the Global South… why can’t systems change?” (global geopolitics, structural adjustment, World Bank problems)
– “The image of… at this point a human child suffering… used to haunt me” and the feminist theory perspective that “society is not responsive to the needs of children, to the needs of women… the need to cultivate children as compassionate citizens”
– Finally… making the connection to animals “I didn’t really see of animals as children – I used to think of them as adults… facing a similar violence and abandonment and neglect of care”
– Becoming a mother: “How poorly western and a lot of other societies attend to the needs of children”
– “If human children all grew up with secure attachment… good and safe and constant care… avoiding trauma… that a lot of the problems we see in society just at a human level would not be there”
– Then “the extension to beyond human… or even to thinking about humans at such a distance from us that we normally can’t process in our moral landscape… we have compassion… as human animals… yet then we are subject to cultures… where that compassion is diluted or actively diminished.”
– “We start to look at things very rationally which also means unempathetically – as if that’s a mark of proper thinking… proper science…proper legal thinking”
– “Animal agriculture… The animals in that system are children – if you look at how long they live”
– “So many issues would be solved if we could just care for human and animal children… at the level which they need care”
– JW: Focusing on wrongs and moral agents vs. harms and moral patients?
– “There should be some level of individual accountability”
– “I’m not at all convinced that the dominant system of incarceration or punishment is the way to go… that just creates more of the same kind of thinking”
– “Why is it that people can’t see the harm… in how we treat animals… why is it that factory farms are not labelled as torture and genocide and something that has to stop now?”
– “Why is it we can’t even see genocide with respect to Gaza or other issues”
– “The issue is not so much individual accountability… more the systemic ways society has been structured to make certain ideologies and practices normative.”
– “This goes down to human psychology, scaffolded by our legal-political and media institutions – where we’re not able to have the compassion and empathy we need to make a difference because usually we have our own individual trauma that we’re processing… even at the collective level… or we’ve just been enculturated into the norms of our society and we haven’t had the opportunity or the challenge… to critically think about it”
– “It’s also human psychology to go along with the crowd… it’s very hard to go against the norm”
37:25 Who Matters?
– Elder brother brought animal rights literature home from university “I just never ever thought of that – in family, in school…”
– At 16 “I was immediately motivated to become vegetarian [or pescetarian]… there wasn’t a dairy industry pamphlet”
– “I remember being so shocked and saddened… I can’t be a part of this… this mother-child separation”
– Going vegan at university “although I regressed on that… in later years… for structural reasons… living in a dormitory”
– Exploring feminism in study at high school. Brother suggested analysing “Death of a Salesman” from a gender perspective “something I really hadn’t thought of”
– Reading academic work – patriarchy etc.
– Going to law school (partly influenced by US TV shows and family stories of maternal grand-father and grand-mother fighting for justice in India – commemorated with statues in their village)
– “I felt like I had this history of law and justice… even though of course being in a middle class Indian family going to medicine was the end all be all of any academic journey 😊”
– Studying criticisms of social Darwinism, enlightenment thinking, dualities (male/female, mind/body, culture/nature…) “This all makes sense with respect to why animals are so poorly situated… why isn’t anyone talking about animals in my courses?”
– JW: “Radical perspectives yet trapped by an anthropocentric default”
– “Early 90’s… deconstruction was the buzzword of the day… why isn’t the human boundary being deconstructed… so I set out to look at this issue myself”
– Reading Carol Adams’ “The Sexual Politics of Meat”… “That was very formative for me”. Josephine Donovan and others
– The genesis for writing “Animals as Legal Beings” 20 years later contesting anthropocentric legal orders
– “Family… then academic… then it became the driving purpose for my life”
– “Now as the adult… with my own child… I try to structure everything around that vegan ethic… and to continue that professionally too”
– JW: Anthropocentrism – sentiocentrism – biocentrism – ecocentrism spectrum vs. the legal terms of object/property vs. personhood and now Maneesha’s concept of “beingness”
– Reasons of vulnerability, responsibility, relations, concerns about attending to suffering “The law needs to be responsive to animals… but what about other non-humans?”
– “That’s a classic reasons that many animal studies get… ‘what about plants?’… but also what about robots… artificial intelligence…?”
– “I did take a biocentric view… ethically we need to think of all living beings… I did draw the line against robots and artificial intelligence… I don’t know if I would do that now… emerging scholarship… I talk to Alexa… I talk to Siri”
– “To whom do we owe responsibility and whose flourishing do we need to attend to?”
– A new status of “beingness”… “a corrective to personhood”
– Standard animal law approach: “The concern is that animals are property in the law and have to stop being property in the law… because of who they are”
– The success of this approach in courts in some parts of the Global South “that animals should be legal persons”
– “I argued against personhood” drawing on critical animal studies, feminist, disability rights, anti-colonial theory… “what is the concept for?”
– “It [personhood] doesn’t bode too well for animals even if it’s formally extended to them… it has a built in anthropocentric orientation… why are we trying to fit animals into this mould”
– Instead of “whether animals are like humans… rational… certain cognitive capacity… (even as corporations have enjoyed legal personhood for centuries)… this paradigmatic human person who can reason… be a good self-maximiser… as an independent agent”
– “This [personhood] doesn’t make sense for most humans and it doesn’t make sense for animals”
– Proposing beingness “attending to animals embodiment, vulnerability and relationality”
– “We should of course care about living beings… but to draw the hard line here – plants cannot be legal beings because beingness is meant, in law, to be as protective a block against instrumental treatment as personhood is… to avoid being deployed in utilitarian calculations… (e.g. if a thousand people would benefit from my death then I should be killed)”
– Animal welfare laws today “work on a utilitarian calculus that almost excuses every use of animals… the three R’s framework in animal research… it’s just rubber stamping almost any basic research on animals”
– “You need a hard stop against this type of anthropocentric, utilitarian reasoning”
– “It can’t apply to plants because we’re going to eat plants”
– JW: Isn’t there a risk people could use that logic to exclude animals “because we’re going to eat them”?
– The potential for plant sentience and the complexity of plant behaviour and communications
– “Err on the side of caution… err on the side of compassion”
– The impact of war on people, animals and even “historic, beautiful buildings that were destroyed… [although] of course I would attend to the living being”
– “We need to definitely focus on animals and doing something for them… at the same time… we have to have much more humility as to our place in this world… leave space for that idea of a vital energy activating all of us that comes from our entire ecosystem… the air that we’re breathing… the water that we are drinking…”
– “Justice… but also… how do we have a compassionate, caring response… cultivate that in the individuals on this planet who are going to have the most influence in directing the relations on this planet… such that we don’t have to say that ‘these things don’t count’”
– JW: How “personhood” and “human” are often based on a restrictive view of a “model human” that often excludes most human beings
– “The beingness proposal as a new legal subjectivity or status for animals is one that is meant to accept difference rather than requiring sameness”
– How personhood tends to favour “animals that are seen to be very human like… primates… cetaceans… big cats… it would take an enormous stretch to have that thinking apply to the animals we eat… the animals suffering the most… animals as products”
– “Instead of trying to convince people that ‘pigs are smart, chickens are smart…’ the ethos should be… to attend to an injustice rather than to say there is a sameness in it”
– JW: How the Humanism worldview has been trying to shift from a Eurocentric, sometimes patronising stance to one that recognises human difference and the ancient global roots of humanist ways of thinking… and maybe even shift towards a genuinely sentiocentric moral scope
– Bed-time reading with Maneesha’s 9-year old: “A non-fiction book… on animal migrations… what animals can do – it’s amazing… the dominant cultural narrative is that we’re special.”
01:07:47 A Better World?
– “You have to stop factory farming” “It would not encounter enormous resistance from all the population… it would encounter a lot of business resistance”
– “Less than 2 years – Phase out all animal experimentation… except where it’s done, as we do now for humans, to benefit animals themselves… consent taking”
– “If I didn’t have to care about politics at all I just would put a stop to all animal killing and captivity”
– Even with politics/public opinion/business push-back “I still do think these two [ending factory farming and animal experimentation] are possible”
– “More scientists speaking about all the new [non-animal experimentation] technologies” (see the Aysha Akhtar Sentientism episode)
– Education: “Re-design the K-12 system to be as anti-anthropocentric as possible… undo the messages which children get right now”
– Kids common compassion for non-human animals then “what culture does is… diminish or obliterate that compassion… acceptable field trips… science”
– “Support parents in their private households before formal education to learn about what’s wrong with humans dominating animals – just like we might do a public education campaign on health”
– A Deeper Kindness documentary series (free and open access!). Also see our Sentientist Education page
– “We just need to get a message to children to counter what they hear… they’re deluged… it’s only ethical to actually undo some of that with counter-messaging”
– JW: “You don’t need to indoctrinate children into caring – because they already do. We just need to stop indoctrinating them out of it.”
– Resistance and back-lash “Animal rights and human rights are seen as a zero-sum game… animal rights… culturally imperialist or racist… totally misguided”
– “All human children, for them to have their best chances going forward, but also to have society to be the best it can be going forward… to care beyond the human… need to be cared for, especially as young kids… such they’re not experiencing trauma that… impedes their ability to respond to others… human or animal others… in respectful and compassionate ways.”
01:15:50 Follow Maneesha
– “I’m of that age where I’m not too excited about social media”
– Maneesha at the University of Victoria
– A Deeper Kindness documentary series
– Human Children, Nonhuman Animals, and a Plant-Based Vegan Future
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Thanks to Graham for the post-production and to Tarabella and Denise for helping to fund this episode via our Sentientism Patreon.