Maneesha Deckha | Animals as Legal Beings

In this talk, Maneesha Deckha calls for a non-anthropocentric reorientation for Canadian law and other Western legal orders, by criticizing their treatment of animals as property, but also finding fault with personhood as an appropriate animal-friendly replacement. Instead, marshalling feminist and postcolonial insights, as well as critical animal studies, the book theorizes a new legal category altogether, namely beingness, as better able to protect animals from exploitation and value animals for who they are. Professor Deckha’s talk delineates this new concept as well as outline how the foundations of anthropocentric legal systems must otherwise change to move toward justice for animals.

After the talk, Decka has a conversation with Mariska Jung and Olave Nduwanje.
 

• Maneesha Deckha is Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include animal law, feminist theory, critical animal studies, vulnerability studies, health law, bioethics, and reproductive policy.

• Mariska Jung (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. She is based at the Department for Political Sciences and affiliated to RHEA, the university’s research center on gender, diversity and intersectionality. In addition she is a member of the Race-Religion Constellation research hub at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, the Netherlands

• Burundi-born Olave Nduwanje identifies as a non-binary trans femme (pronouns: she/her/hers). She is a published author, legal scholar, activist on anti-racism, LGBTQI+ rights, anti-capitalism, disability rights, anti-ecocide, etc.

The talk is part of a Series of More-Than-Human Encounters together with Crosstalks/VUB.