Description
Book SynopsisIn Animals as Legal Beings, Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Canadian law and, by extension, other legal orders around the world, participate in the social construction of the human-animal divide and the abject rendering of animals as property. Through a rigorous but cogent analysis, Deckha calls for replacing the exploitative property classification for animals with a new transformative legal status or subjectivity called beingness.
In developing a new legal subjectivity for animals, one oriented toward respecting animals for who they are rather than their proximity to idealized versions of humanness, Animals as Legal Beings seeks to bring critical animal theorizations and animal law closer together. Throughout, Deckha draws upon the feminist animal care tradition, as well as feminist theories of embodiment and relationality, postcolonial theory, and critical animal studies. Her argument is critical of the liberal legal view of animals and directed at a
Table of Contents
Moving Toward a Non-Anthropocentric Legal Status for Animals 1. No Escape: Anti-Cruelty Law’s Property Foundations 2. What’s Wrong with Personhood?: The Humanizing Impact of Anthropos 3. Toward a Post-Anthropocentric Legal Ontology 4. Beingness: A New Legal Subjectivity for Animals 5. Liberal Humanism Repackaged? 6. Conclusion
