Centering Animality in Law and Liberation: The Zoopolitics of Reclaiming the Animal in Personhood

Although there is widespread agreement that the property status of nonhuman animals is indefensible, the debate about how to remedy their situation is ongoing. This paper explores three possibilities for approaching the issue of legal status: (1) extending the existing concept of personhood beyond the human to other animals; (2) developing an alternative legal subjectivity for nonhuman animals that is neither property nor personhood; (3) redefining personhood in animal terms while retaining the rights-bearing significance of personhood and decentering the human from animal subjectivity in law. I offer a critique of the first two strategies and defend the third on both conceptual and political grounds, as most responsive to the requirements of a genuinely liberatory politics. I call this the "centering animality" approach and apply it to the legal context through my proposal of animal personhood.