Animals in the Law and Humanities Working Group
Presents:
Tyler Totten
“To Stand for All”: Confronting Logics of Human Exceptionalism in Legal Personification
Tuesday January 14, 2025
4:00pm - 5:00pm EST
VIRTUAL
https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/89917623676
Meeting ID: 899 1762 3676
Abstract: In this paper, the author responds to an emerging discourse in animal rights scholarship that proposes a “third option” legal category for animals that is neither person nor property. While a third option is inventive and innovative, the author argues that it may have the unintended effect of perpetuating existing species-based inequalities by conceding the supposed “truth” of objections to animal personification: that animals do not possess those “special” characteristics which qualify human beings to be legal persons. Instead of pursuing a third option, the author urges a posthumanist response that highlights both the artificiality of the person and the falsehood of human exceptionalism. By reversing the analogies of human and animal capacities such that they do not illustrate animal specialness, but rather human ordinariness, this paper contends “human exceptionalist” patterns of personification need to be undermined to make the legal person into a truly inclusive category for all beings.
Tyler Totten is a teaching-stream Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science’s Law & Society program at York University. He regularly teaches courses on contemporary social issues in relation to the law, fundamental learning skills for university students, and his particular area of academic interest: animal rights
For further workshop information contact events.law@utoronto.ca
