Some Political Animals Will Inevitably Be More Equal Than Others
Jelena Džankić (European University Institute)
This summer, I spent some time at the tiny Greek island of Donoussa, home to 213 inhabitants. And twice as many cats. Donoussa’s cats are special. They are all street cats, but if you look at them, they are all clean, healthy and well-fed. The local community takes care of cats by selling handmade bags and souvenirs to buy food for the feline population. As there is no vet on the island, locals use social media to organise transport and care for a sick cat on the neighbouring island of Naxos. The cats of Donoussa are not simply pets; they are not pets at all. They are a part of a local community, where they are, in many ways, political animals.
I am not a political theorist. This is probably why Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s kick off contribution to this forum debate made me think about the Donoussa cats as an example of a community where the wellbeing of (at least some) animals is an important part of communal decision-making and identity. I agree that it is important to pluralise citizenship and consider the world around us as constitutive of the political communities created by humans for (some) humans. I am less convinced by the claim that developing a conception of citizenship that would make room for animals would, in some ways, address ‘exclusions and oppressions associated with traditional ideas of citizenship’. I will explain why by highlighting first how the tripartite animal classification silently reproduces injustice, and then by looking at the kind of (in)equalities it would create.
A classification that silently reproduces injustice
Donaldson and Kymlicka propose three different political relationships between human and non-human animals, based on whether animals are wild, domesticated or liminal. These categories track different kinds of relationships between humans and animals. Wild animals, politically and socially distant from humans, would be entitled to self-governing autonomous territories, through an interspecies diplomacy/treaty federalism model. Such sovereignty would protect them from human encroachment. Domesticated animals, cohabiting with humans for centuries, are owed co-citizenship within a shared polity due to relationships of dependency, while liminal animals would be granted a form of co-denizenship in a shared place-based polity, additional to citizenship in their own communities. In their recent book, Donaldson and Kymlicka start from the animals’ right to politics. They define these categories in view of the forms of sociality, communication, culture, and decision-making that animals themselves enact. Animals can also change categories: domesticated animals may become wild, wild animals may choose a life in liminal spaces, and liminal animals could join society.
Thinking about this classification with my furry friends from Donoussa in mind, I was wondering whether it was not at odds with the basic intent of pluralising citizenship to address some of its traditional injustices, oppressions, and exclusions. The categories seem to single out domesticated animals, traditionally subjected to human needs for food, companionship, or labour. So, yes, in a way – we can think about co-citizenship of these species as a ‘reparation’, reminiscent of those that – to a certain degree – have been given to individuals of different races historically subjected to meet the above-mentioned needs of other individuals. Similarly, the entitlement of wild animals to autonomous (hence confined) territories is quite akin to some solutions adopted for indigenous peoples in the Global North. To avoid misunderstanding, the point is not to equate these groups with animals but simply to highlight that the model borrows its architecture from human arrangements that are themselves widely criticised as partial or exclusionary. The classification is problematic for two reasons.
First, the three categories of animals are given entitlements based on the different kinds of relationships they have with humans. Yet these relationships are themselves the product of human choices. Hence, grounding rights in them risks rewarding the outcomes of past exercises of human power over animals rather than redressing their consequences. Indeed, one could make a counter-argument that domesticated animals have been subjected and thus exploited the most, and that thus they ‘deserve’ co-citizenship. Yet, as Donaldson and Kymlicka themselves acknowledge, humans have occupied animal territory, confining wild animals to particular territories and have constrained liminal animals to live in human-built environments. Furthermore, liminal and wild animals are at a continuous risk of being hunted or exterminated. Would non-interference through interspecies diplomacy and co-denizenship suffice to address the kinds of injustice historically perpetrated against wildlife?
Second, the entitlements per category, as noted above, resemble systems humans created for other humans. While the proposal acknowledges the potential for political agency of animals, it does not set up a system of political equality, as already noted by Rainer Bauböck. Donaldson and Kymlicka make these categories very responsive to animal politics, and – as noted above – allow animals to cross the category boundaries. I support this principle, but I am not certain that the categories can fulfil it. Animal politics still need to be ‘translated’ and ‘interpreted’ by humans. If an animal moves from one category to another (e.g., a cat deciding to live on the streets), this needs to be acknowledged by humans before it has any real effects. This then means that, while animals remain free to choose where to ‘belong’, the power to interpret those choices and decide on their consequences remains with humans. While the good intention behind the proposal is indisputable, rather than correcting the injustices inherent in the exclusionary and historically oppressive notion of citizenship, such a system could silently reproduce them – not towards other humans, but towards animals themselves.
An unequal equality
I very much agree with the idea of citizenship as non-homogenous status, and the recognition that different forms of political communities enact different kinds of citizenship, as proposed by Donaldson and Kymlicka. While we may not fully understand them, non-human animal communities have their own modes of operation, mechanisms of decision-making, and systems of care, both for the young and for the old. For instance, lions organise around cooperative hunting and have a size-based feeding hierarchy, as opposed to elephants whose community is driven by knowledge-based leadership with no feeding hierarchy. Within their communities, these animals have political agency. The same is valid for domesticated and liminal animals, whose political agency involves, in many cases, interspecies relations. Their skills in diplomacy are, in some ways, quite sophisticated. In this sense, I echo Maneesha Deckha’s call for recognising intimate caregiving and decision-making among animals that, indeed, in many respects, resembles the feminist concept of “everyday citizenship” developed to validate women’s domestic contributions. Such a recognition should help us reimagine political communities in which we can recognise animals as communal stakeholders. The question is what would those communities look like and how would they function?
The main conundrum that this debate has created for me is whether the proposed animal rights would be individual or group rights, and whether inter-group transitions would change the non-human animal’s citizenship status. For instance, would all cats be granted co-citizenship because they are cats, or would cats living with humans have different rights from street cats? Today, cats living with humans are legally their owners’ property. But even when ownership is abolished, as Donaldson and Kymlicka propose in Zoopolis, would living in a human household rather than on the street change a cat’s status? The Donoussa cats are street cats, so are the stray cats in the streets of New York or Berlin. Would their rights be equal to those of my aunt’s loyal cat-companion, Her Highness, Elisabeth Victoria Maria Wilhelmina the Fourth? Donaldson and Kymlicka’s response would be that the cat is free to leave a household and become a liminal animal. Yet who decides when the cat has made that choice, rather than got lost or abandoned? Does the cat who chose liminality lose all claims to human care? If we presume that rights are given to a preset species of animals within each category (as group rights), this would create injustice for species whose lives cut across categories and between animals living similar lives, such as street cats and street rats, sharing the same status as co-denizens, but having potentially different claims on human care, such as food, shelter, or veterinary treatment; or feral pigeons, descendants of domesticated birds whose claims would differ from those of chickens. If, however, we presume that rights are individual and based on category boundaries, this would create an imbalance between housed and unhoused cats, and between free pigeons and pigeons in captivity.
Donaldson and Kymlicka, in fact, do not see denizenship as a second-class status. An urban goose is at the same time a full citizen of a goose society and a co-denizen of the city. Humans are citizens of a human society and co-denizens of the same place. An arrangement like this looks symmetrical and fair. Even so, the place-based polity in which humans and geese co-exist has a physical, legal, and social infrastructure built mostly by humans. This means that, what seemingly looks like equal status, coexists with deep inequality in practice. Think of the cats of Donoussa, who are citizens of their feline community and co-denizens on the island. They are cared for because the human community has decided to organise food and transport to a veterinary on Naxos. What cats receive as co-denizens of the place-based polity depends nearly entirely on the good will of humans, not on any rights or entitlements as co-denizens in the place-based polity.
The second conundrum that the debate has created has a bit of an ‘Orwellian’ flair. While we cannot (yet) bring about political equality between humans and animals, does this proposal create equality among animal species within the same category, or will some animals inevitably be ‘more equal than others’? How to ensure that species whose entire history with humans has been one of exploitation, risk of harm, and violence, become equal co-citizens alongside companion species? Would the legacy of this difference persist in some form? Donaldson and Kymlicka give the example of the micropolitics of animal sanctuaries, where the previously domesticated animals could interact among themselves and with some humans to help shape the broader interaction between humans and animals. This might be one possible solution, but the very idea of a sanctuary comes with a bounded space, shielded from mainstream society. In other words, political equality among animals exists under the conditions of captivity.
In lieu of a conclusion
I am very much in agreement with the baseline arguments of Donaldson and Kymlicka – that citizenship needs to be pluralised, and that humankind – as one of many species inhabiting this planet – needs to reflect and improve on how it relates to the animal world. Where I am not convinced is the logic of classification of animals and the respective allocation of political rights. Even if the three categories are designed to respond to animal politics, and even if co-denizenship has not been intended as a second-class status, the shared polity in which all these human and non-human animals co-exist remains dominated by humans. By sorting animals into wild, domesticated and liminal categories without addressing this asymmetry the proposal risks reinforcing the very hierarchies it seeks to abolish. The question is not which animal belongs to which category, but rather whether membership in a particular category gives animals real claims vis-à-vis humans whose world they share. The cats of Donoussa could perhaps suggest a different direction. They are neither co-citizens nor denizens in any formal way, yet they are cared for, their wellbeing shapes communal choices, and their presence is central to the island’s identity. What makes these cats political animals are relationships of care and responsibility that the human community has chosen to build around them. Perhaps, our task should not be to design a taxonomy of animal citizenship, but to ask how human political communities can take responsibility for all the animals whose lives they shape, be they housed or unhoused, wild or tame, loved or eaten. Otherwise, in attempting to extend citizenship beyond the human, we may simply end up with a new ‘farm’ on which all animals are equal, but some are far more equal than others.