Animal Language
Animals have been reduced to being part of nature. Deprived of legal and political status, their biological existence makes them susceptible to exploitation. A system of factory farming and mass animal killing has emerged, in which animals are valued in terms of economic profit and instrumentalized for human purpose. A prominent justification for the denial of animal rights lies in the perceived dualism between human and nonhuman animals, bolstered by the claim that animals lack the capacity for language.
In recent years, however, scholars in the field have demonstrated the complexity of nonhuman animal communication. Not only do animals communicate at an individual and collective intraspecies level, but they also interact with members of other species. A growing body of research is using machine learning to detect, analyze and categorize animal calls, in order to decode their meaning. With the help of AI, these scientists have even discovered that different colonies of certain species have different dialects. Perhaps these developments should lead us to question the veil of anthropocentric privilege that upholds the contemporary division between human and nonhuman animals.
The piece will examine the role of language in helping marginalised groups acquire political rights. It suggests that the capacity for language is central in deciding which groups acquire these rights, and that a first step in providing animals with political rights is recognising their capacity to communicate using language.
The Suppression of Rights throughout History
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, compiled by the General Assembly of the United Nations, came into effect. From then onwards, fundamental human rights and respect for human dignity have been ensured, at least in theory. In its preamble, the declaration acknowledges human dignity to be the starting point of human rights. In its original sense, possessing dignity means being worthy of moral consideration and, according to Kantian philosophy, it is ascribed to beings of intrinsic value. Thus, it is crucial to further investigate what sets humans apart from nonhuman animals and leads to this moral distinction.
Singer argues that assigning dignity solely to the human species must entail that human beings have some sort of morally relevant capacities that allow for this differentiation. He is convinced of the lack of such uniquely human characteristics to this immoral discrimination on the basis of species, coining the term ‘speciesism' to describe this unjustified preferential treatment of our own species. Rather, sentience, and specifically the connection between sentience and suffering, should be the critical factor in assigning dignity.
Our view of animals is heavily influenced by the works of ancient Greek philosophers, who had a very different understanding to Singer. Aristotle believed animals’ inability to speak and reason demonstrates their inferiority to the human race. Consequently, their existence is purposive, with human-beings being able to exercise power over them. Similarly, Descartes considered animals to be non-rational ‘material automata’, without moral standing. He emphasized the importance of language in testing rationality – a uniquely human attribute in his opinion. For the longest time, animals have been believed to be mute and lacking important mental capacities. It seems human beings' capacity to reason and to learn and use language created an artificial border between human and nonhuman animals, upon which the right to dignity and moral consideration are predicated.
Historically, groups of human beings have been stripped of their rights on similar grounds. Within the human community, categories including race, gender, class, and religion have deprived certain individuals of political rights merely by virtue of their membership of an ‘inferior’ group. Aristotle, for instance, equated virtue to function, thereby assigning social roles through a teleological argument (an explanation corresponding to some purpose or function). While all animals merely possess voice, human beings are speaking animals capable of language. As the ability to reason and speak is inherently human, Aristotle considered us to be political animals, who can realize their full potential through practicing public action and speech in their political community.
This deliberative function of humankind justified superiority to other living species. However, within the human race there were important distinctions to be made: slaves and women were either completely lacking, or only partially possessed a ‘deliberate part’ and were therefore subjected to male dominance and rule. This ‘natural’ subordinate role of slaves and women implied a functional, socio-political superiority of men. Consequently, these groups were seen as part of nature, excluded from the political sphere, and lacked rights and powers. The supposed diminished capacity to reason justified regarding these groups as ‘lesser-than’ humans and depriving them of rights.
The Role of Language in Acquiring Rights
Similarly, humanity saw itself confronted with another situation of rightlessness during World War Two. The atrocities of Nazi Germany caused a stream of refugees to leave the country and end up in a situation of ‘statelessness’, deprived of legal status and excluded from any political community. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt, inspired by Aristotle’s presupposition of humans as speaking and political beings, described this circumstance to be a form of existence deprived from speech and polity – it was a circumstance women and slaves were victims of during (and long after) Aristotle’s lifetime. She argues that the ‘right to politics itself’ is the most basic human right. In this case, neither refugees’ capacity to reason, nor to speak, were questioned. Rather, they lacked the security of a state to enforce their rights, and the space to have their voices heard. Arendt connects the denial of rights with the circumstance of being excluded from the political sphere, which makes it harder, if not impossible, to obtain and enact equality.
Ranciere takes a different approach, contrasting Arendt’s conception of the non-political human and political citizen. He believes human beings who lack political rights must enact equality by contesting their political exclusion and, in doing so, “make themselves heard as political animals''. Disagreeing with Aristotle’s conception of becoming a political animal through a capacity for speech, he argues that political exclusion is mostly the result of oppressed groups who can speak but are not heard. It is therefore social recognition of the ability to speak which determines who is worthy of rights and who is not. Through making oneself heard, agents become political and can claim ‘the right to have rights’.
In order to obtain and enact fundamental rights, suppressed groups have historically fought to emancipate themselves, through overcoming the dualism between the public political and non-political social spheres. As seen after World War Two, not just the capacity to speak, but specifically the social recognition of this capacity, is a key premise of being able to claim rights.
As research is increasingly showing the complexity of nonhuman animal communication, we should perhaps deliberate whether our anthropocentric definition of language is too narrow, effectively leading to the silencing of animals and neglect for their interests. Rather, existing definitions could be extended to accommodate different ways animals express themselves. The traditionally accepted form of political communication must be challenged in order to incorporate non-human animal voices. Only then can animals make themselves heard and litigate contemporary animal rights struggles – this is precisely what Ranciere sees as making up the core of political life. And this is precisely what it will take to liberate animals from the chains we have shackled them in.