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Social Theory and Practice Vol. 46, No. 4 (October 2020): 709–735 DOI: 10.5840/soctheorpract202061296

Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge1

Sue Donaldson

Abstract: Many theorists of the ‘political turn’ in animal rights theory emphasize the need for animals’ interests to be considered in political decision-making processes, but deny that this requires self-representation and participation by animals themselves. I argue that participation by domesticated animals in co-authoring our shared world is indeed required, and explore two ways to proceed: 1) by enabling animal voice within the existing geography of human-animal roles and relationships; and 2) by freeing animals into a revitalized public commons (‘animal agora’) where citizens encounter one another in spontaneous, unpredictable encounters in spaces that they can re-shape together.

Keywords: animals, democracy, participation, representation, commons, relational agency

[N]obody—from the most fervent animal liberationist to the most unrepentant carnivore—believes that animals are fitted by nature to enjoy civil and political rights.

(Barry 2001: 481)

Much has changed since Brian Barry wrote these words in 2001, and civil and political rights for nonhuman animals are very much on the agenda as part of the recent ‘political turn’ in animal ethics (Milligan 2015). One dimension of this political turn addresses the place of animals in democratic theory and practice. Some theorists have advocated for political representation of animals by human advocates or trustees who speak on behalf of animals in legislative, deliberative or regulatory bodies (Cochrane 2016; Garner 2016; Parry 2016). Other theorists, however, advance the more radical claim that animals have the right, not just to indirect representation by human trustees, but also to direct political voice and participation through processes of self-representation to the

1. In ancient Greece the agora was the political space of informal politics, and the Pnyx⸻the meeting space of the democratic assembly⸻was the space of formal politics. As Müller notes: “every democracy needs both a Pnyx . . . and an agora (as well as other spaces that might fulfill similar functions)—a place for formal and one for informal politics, one for collective decision making at a fixed point in time (including rules for closure in time) and one for ongoing, largely unregulated exchange of views and the formation of political judg- ment through more or less random encounters with other members of the demos” (Müller 2019: 205).

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extent this is possible. My aim in this paper is to explore models of how this might work, and the challenges posed to standard ideas about the nature and preconditions of democracy.

The idea that animals have a right to political voice and participation⸻that democracy requires deliberating with, and not just about, animals⸻has been advanced by several authors (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011; Driessen 2014; Meijer 2019). In this paper I will build on my earlier work with Will Kymlicka in which we advance the case for animal citizenship. In Zoopolis we argue, in common with most animal right theorists, that all sentient animals are owed certain basic negative rights, including the right not to be killed, experimented upon, or held captive (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: chap. 2). This imme- diately would preclude most existing forms of animal agriculture, research, breeding and other uses, resulting in a dramatic reduction in the number of domesticated animals (henceforth DAs). However, we argue that abolishing existing forms of animal exploitation would not lead to the disappearance or extinction of all DAs. They cannot ‘rewild’ immediately (if ever), and we have no right to expel them. We therefore need to think about how human societies will relate to DAs and their offspring into the future.

In this context we have argued that DAs must be recognized as full citi- zens with a right to co-author the laws, institutions and norms of the societies to which they belong.2 The argument involves two key steps:

• DAs should be seen as members of a shared society with humans. Through domestication, humans have brought animals into society, and forcibly and selectively bred them to live and work alongside us, thereby constraining their options for exit. While the practice of confinement, selective breeding and exploitation to serve human purposes must end with the recognition of animals’ basic rights, many DAs will continue to exist (through their own free procreation), and their forms of em- bodiment and sociality make it possible for them to form proximate, communicative, interdependent, trusting and cooperative relationships with humans (and vice versa). They are suited, and entitled, to social membership.

2. We argue that while wild animals need to be represented in human decision-making, they should be represented as citizens of their own communities, not as co-citizens of a shared cooperative scheme with humans. Wild animals are affected third parties in relation to human polities⸻entitled to robust norms of international justice⸻whereas domesticated animals are members of multispecies polities with humans, entitled to participate in forms of self-representation as members of those polities. Representation for ‘liminal’ animals (i.e., non-domesticated animals such as urban wildlife who gravitate and adapt to human settlement) falls somewhere in between (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: chaps. 6–7).

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• Political citizenship should track social membership. All who are mem- bers of society, and therefore governed by its norms, are equal members with a right to participate in shaping those norms through processes of self-representation. Membership without full citizenship is a subjugated status.

These two claims have generated a lively and evolving debate, but to over- simplify, many commentators have embraced the first claim that DAs should be seen as members of society, while rejecting the second claim that social membership requires political citizenship (Edmundson 2015; Garner 2016; Hinchliffe 2015; Hooley 2017; Pepper 2016). For these theorists, since DAs are indeed members of society, their interests must be represented in political decision-making. However, it is neither necessary nor even possible for DAs to engage in self-representation: they can only be represented by others. The task therefore is to develop some new status within political theory for DA ‘membership-without-citizenship,’ perhaps akin to the ward status of children. Political citizenship is seen as unnecessary and inappropriate for animals, giv- en the availability of alternative forms of indirect representation deemed more suited to their interests and capacities. In response, Will Kymlicka and I have challenged the adequacy of wardship (for children or for domesticated ani- mals), arguing that any attempt to divide the members of society into ‘political citizens’ and ‘wards’ is conceptually arbitrary and politically problematic.

Part of this disagreement is conceptual or semantic: critics worry that eras- ing the citizen/ward distinction requires expanding concepts such as “politi- cal agency” or “co-authoring norms” beyond recognition. I will review these conceptual arguments in Part 1. But in my view, the disagreement is also in part empirical or imaginative: we simply lack compelling examples of how these concepts could be operationalized in the animal case. For many people political participation is first and foremost about voting based on a rational as- sessment of platform/policy options, and insofar as animals cannot cast a bal- lot in the usual sense, they cannot be political agents.3 But recent democratic theory has already moved well beyond vote-centric conceptions of democracy. The legitimacy and quality of democratic decision-making depends on dense horizontal and vertical webs of participation, deliberation, representation and accountability that operate alongside and in-between moments of periodic elections.4 It is primarily these wider non-electoral dimensions of the political ecology that make possible meaningful political participation for DAs.

3. But see Conradt and List 2008 and Strandburg-Peshkin et al. 2015 on ‘democratic’ forms of group decision-making within social species; see also Meijer 2019.

4. On the shift from a narrow focus on the dyadic relationship between voter and elected rep- resentative to a more systemic view of deliberation and representation, see Saward 2010 and Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012. It is an interesting question, beyond the scope of

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However, as critics have noted, the examples in Zoopolis of non-electoral participation are “not especially promising” and “provide thin support” for the claim that animals can co-author the laws (Hinchcliffe 2015: 311, 313). A much-criticized passage suggests that the “mere presence” of DAs in public space can lead to changed attitudes and practices (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011: 114). For example, the presence of dogs on trains or in restaurants can change people’s ideas about who belongs and who matters. We borrow this idea from critical disability theory, which has made similar claims about the political importance of the visible physical presence of people with cognitive disabilities:

The mere act of being present in a deliberative situation may constitute a political act that ruptures dominant stereotypes and generalized anxiety surrounding disability. The physical presence of disabled persons can often serve to disrupt patterns of oppression within deliberative contexts and facilitate the recognition of nonverbal persons’ needs. (Swadley 2016: 988)5

However, critics argue that even if the presence of DAs in public or political contexts has desirable effects, this does not yet qualify as ‘political agency’ or ‘having a say,’ let alone ‘co-authoring’ the norms that govern society.6 For these critics, democratic citizenship requires reflective cognitive and linguistic capacities beyond those required for social membership simpliciter, including capacities for collective deliberation, collective intentionality, and collective imagination which (allegedly) non-human animals do not possess (Hooley 2017; Ladwig 2015; Pepper 2016). Co-authoring social norms requires that individuals be able to conceive different possible collective futures, and in- tentionally commit to them. In Ladwig’s terms, the fact that “symbolically integrated or ‘imagined’ communities” are beyond animals’ “social horizon of orientation” means that political citizenship is simply beyond them (Ladwig 2015: 43). While DAs can “causally influence” public debate through their presence or their activities, they cannot “refer to them intentionally” (Ladwig 2015: 33), and this lack of intent directed at ultimate ends means that they are

this paper, whether any restrictions on the right to vote based on age, cognitive ability or species are justified. Some jurisdictions have abolished such restrictions in relation to cognitive disability, and as a result we enter a situation where some individuals who lack the cognitive capacity to vote have the legal right to vote. Some authors find this absurd and intolerable (e.g., Saunders 2012: 286); others find it benign, appropriate and indeed inevitable (e.g., Beckman 2009: 165). I support the latter view due to the crucial symbolic importance of the right to vote, but for the purposes of this paper I am focusing on those (non-electoral) forms of participation likely to be most meaningful for DAs.

5. Cf Goodley 2013: 636: “A body that sticks out⸻that challenges conventions and stan- dards⸻ permits a moment of disruption and a chance to ask, what counts as a valued body?”

6. “[T]his, and other examples, are instances of animals having an effect on policy, rather than examples of genuine co-authorship” (Cochrane 2016: 23).

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not, and cannot be, co-creators of social norms.7 Animals are therefore “obvi- ously unable to directly participate” in political decision-making (Parry 2016: 146). Whatever the limits and dangers of wardship, there may simply be no viable alternative.

In subsequent publications, Will Kymlicka and I have responded to this important objection, exploring modes of animal voice/participation that go be- yond ‘mere presence’ to more intentional forms of action. We acknowledge that presence, while a vital precondition of political inclusion, is insufficient as a form of meaningful participation for DAs. Appropriate institutional mecha- nisms for soliciting animal voices and ensuring that these voices shape collec- tive decision-making are also required (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2015; 2016; 2017).

However, our revised position remains under-developed. We implicitly appeal to two different logics of participation that need to be distinguished, each of which connects in different ways to democratic principles. One mod- el⸻which I will describe as ‘democratizing the existing landscape of citizen- ship’⸻focuses on bringing participation down to the ‘spaces and places’ that are meaningful to animals, relying on ideas of relational agency and embodied communication. If animals cannot directly participate in parliamentary debates about policy options, they can express preferences and make choices about their more immediate environments at home, the local park, or at work. De- fenders of children’s citizenship argue that having a say on matters that affect them calls for “child-sized spaces” of citizenship (Jans 2004), and this insight can be extended to DAs. In Part 2 of the paper, I explore this move, and how it can be strengthened through novel mechanisms of participation. However, I also identify some of its inherent limits. If animal voice/participation is limited to discrete and pre-existing social roles and social locations, then too much of the broader structure of society is taken for granted, locking in features of society that animals had little or no say in shaping.

We therefore need a second model of participation that creates new spaces of citizenship⸻spaces where human and animal co-citizens can engage one another in spontaneous, unpredictable encounters, spaces they are empowered to re-shape together. Our good is not (or not only) reducible to pre-political in- terests to be counted and weighed in decision-making; our good is something we come to understand and develop together through political community. For individuals who can’t easily participate in discursive forms of political com- munity, justice requires that we ‘enable spaces’ for a more embodied politics. Genuine inclusion and participation, I will argue, requires dramatic alteration

7. See also Pepper’s claim that political agents are those with “the capacity to intend to effect institutions, the capacity for complex forms of shared intentionality, and the capacity to imagine alternative political futures” (2016: 12).

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of the political and economic environment to (re)create a public commons— i.e., land, institutions, resources and practices that cannot be appropriated for private use (by human adult contractors), and which are politically empowered for meaningful local governance by all who inhabit them (Ostrom 1990). This idea of a multispecies commons, or animal agora, is the focus of Part 3.

In sum, I will argue (contra Barry) that animals are indeed fit to enjoy po- litical rights. And while my primary concern is animals, it should be clear that the underlying issues are not unique to the animal case. The animal question simply raises in a particularly vivid way some of the most fundamental and unresolved questions in democratic theory about membership and boundar- ies, interests and capacities, public and private, embodied communication and rational deliberation. Throughout much of Western history, answers to these questions have been driven in part by the ideological desire or need to exclude animals (with knock-on effects for other non-normative human groups). This paper explores what democratic theory looks like if we start from the premise that all members of society have a right to shape the terms of our shared life.

As I noted earlier, some critics dispute whether social membership gener- ates a moral right to political participation. I will briefly review that debate in the next section, but my aim is not to provide a knock-down theoretical argu- ment for that premise. My aim, rather, is to explore what democracy would look like if we accept that premise. I leave it to readers to decide if this offers a compelling vision of multispecies society.8

1. Is Political Participation Necessary for Domesticated Animals?

Theorists of the ‘political turn’ in animal rights agree on the need for politi- cal representation of DAs. DAs are pervasively governed by modern states, and their interests must therefore be represented in political decision-making (Smith 2012). Theorists disagree, however, about whether political represen- tation requires political participation. Some commentators think that indirect representation by human trustees (or other mechanisms) is sufficient.

Recent work by Cochrane and Garner illustrates this position. While both agree that animals must be enfranchised in a “formal institutional arena where [their] interests are made to count” (Garner 2016: 116), they are not talking about political participation by animals, but rather representation by human trustees (official advocates, ombudspersons, etc.) with a fiduciary duty to rep-

8. A kindred strategy is pursued in work by Blattner, Donaldson, and Wilcox (2020). Rather than starting with a set of assumptions about what capacities DAs might or might not have and how these relate to a pre-existing concept of political agency, we instead explore the actual ways in which formerly farmed animals do politics, negotiating the norms and prac- tices of their shared multispecies society in a sanctuary setting.

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resent animals’ interests.9 These human trustees would be legally obligated to act on behalf of animals, to justify their decisions and to be held to account by other humans (animal advocates, ethology and welfare experts, media, etc.).

For Cochrane and Garner, the fiduciary representation model is not lim- ited to animals. Since the basis for denying participation to animals is their inability to engage in abstract forms of rational autonomy and deliberation, there are also groups of humans who fall into the ward category on their view, such as children or people with cognitive disabilities. Their proposals for ani- mals, in effect, extend to animals models of fiduciary representation that they consider to be effective for politically ‘voiceless’ humans. As Cochrane puts it, “the most basic interests of those without a voice⸻such as children, future generations, and the seriously disabled⸻can be identified and represented ef- fectively” by trustees, and this is what he seeks for animals (2016: 28; see also Hinchcliffe 2015: 310). Garner too describes his approach as extending to animals a theory of representation for “mute” interests “such as future genera- tions and nature” (Garner 2016:114). In effect, then, their approach divides so- ciety into two groups: human adults capable of political agency, who are seen as having political voice and hence rights to direct participation; and every- one else, human or animal, who are seen as politically “voiceless” or “mute,” and hence covered by schemes of plenary guardianship and indirect fiduciary representation.

What should we make of such proposals? Compared to the status quo, a world with effective mechanisms of fiduciary representation for animals would represent an extraordinary improvement. And fiduciary representation will surely play an important part of any adequate account of animals’ political status. But is it sufficient for DAs? And, in particular, is it sufficient from the perspective of democratic theory?

Assessment of this wardship model for animals is likely to depend in part on our assessment of how well these models have worked in the human case. In recent decades, self and other advocates for children and people with cogni- tive disabilities have strongly challenged plenary guardianship, insisting on the importance of self-representation and political voice, and demanding par- ticipation rights.10 Members of these groups have fought for recognition as full

9. Trustees could be elected, if the electoral system set aside a certain number of seats for animal representatives, or they could be appointed as ombudspersons. The electoral model would likely require setting restrictions on who can run or who can vote for the reserved seats: Garner suggests “a constituency made up of organisations concerned about the well- being of animals” (2016: 114).

10. For evidence of systemic failures of representation for these groups⸻including biased priority setting in health research and care, failure to implement universal design, rampant privatization of public space and services, catastrophic environmental practices, failure to protect from violence⸻see Bonnardel 2015; Munn 2018; Simplican 2015.

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and equal citizens, not wards, and this ongoing advocacy is reflected in inter- national human rights law. A crucial feature of both the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007) is to recognize that substantive political participation is the right of all citizens, not just those who meet particular cognitive thresh- olds for rational reflection. This has inspired a wave of democratic theory and practice premised on “involving the whole human spectrum in public delib- eration” (Raisio, Valkama, and Peltola 2014), which in turn requires devel- oping new models of embodied and supported agency for those who cannot participate effectively through abstract reasoning and discourse (Knight 2015; Swadley 2016). This is just the latest struggle against the kind of political ward status that has time and again failed to secure justice for groups so designated (e.g., women, the property-less, racialized and colonized peoples).

If we explore the reasons why children’s rights and disability rights groups have rejected wardship, we will see that they apply to animals as well (Donald- son and Kymlicka 2016; 2017; 2018a; 2018b). I summarize these arguments briefly.

(1) The Capacity Contract. Cochrane and Garner present wardship as a benign and good-faith response to the simple fact that some individu- als (human or animal) lack certain political competences. But as Sim- plican (2015) argues, it is better understood in terms of the “capacity contract,” according to which “competent” able-bodied and neuro-typ- ical adults agree to treat each other as political equals, but at the very same moment they assert their right to rule over the “incompetent.” As such, the capacity contract is one example of the broader category of “domination contracts,” in which the members of one group agree to treat each other as political equals while simultaneously asserting their right to rule over others. The capacity contract follows in a long line that includes the sexual contract (Pateman 1988), in which men agree to treat each other as equals while asserting the right to rule over women; the racial contract (Mills 1997), in which whites agree to treat each other as equals while asserting the right to rule over blacks; and the settler contract (Nichols 2013), in which European settlers agree to treat each other as political equals while asserting the right to rule over indigenous peoples. These domination contracts all take the same form: members of the dominant group treat each other according to norms of equality and consent, while asserting the natural right to gov- ern over others. Domination contracts are inherently anti-democratic:

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indeed, the idea that one group has the natural right to rule over others is the antithesis of democracy.11

(2) Arbitrary Thresholds: The capacity contract requires setting thresholds which, in vote-centric theories of democracy, limit the vote to those who pass tests of maturity and competence, and in ‘talk-centric’ theo- ries of deliberative democracy, limit participation to those who can justify their claims through the giving of reasons. But there is no non- arbitrary way of drawing these thresholds. Members of society differ endlessly in the forms of knowledge possessed (including embodied knowledge), communicative competences (including embodied com- munication), forms of practical and theoretical reasoning engaged in, and forms of empathy and pro-social dispositions displayed. Demo- cratic theory proclaims a commitment to universality and pluralism, but then seems to privilege a much narrower set of ‘normal’ adults with ‘normal’ cognition who speak through ‘normal’ modes of com- munication. The capacity contract has come under sustained attack for these arbitrary distinctions and privileges.12

(3) Social Recognition: As a defender of an “interest-based” account of rights, Cochrane thinks that we recognize others as equals by count- ing their interests, and that insofar as fiduciary representation entails a public commitment to fairly counting the interests of wards, we there- by secure their public recognition. In reality, however, equal political rights constitute a key instantiation of our recognition of, and com- mitment to, the equality of all members of society.13 Political rights are not just one means amongst others for representing interests: they also carry enormous expressive or symbolic significance as a marker of membership. If groups are excluded from political participation⸻ if they are not seen and heard⸻this reflects and reproduces a wider problem of social invisibility.

(4) Epistemic Justice: In order to know what justice requires in our rela- tions with DAs, we need to know whether and how they want to relate to us. But we do not yet know this, and we cannot know it without the direct participation of animals themselves. The wardship model

11. See Wadiwel 2009 on the prevailing assumption of human sovereignty over animals, and Ridler 2013 on imperium.

12. Amongst many others: Simplican 2015; Arneil 2012; Taylor 2017; Rollo 2018; Beckman 2009; Munn 2018; Lopez-Guerra 2014; Swadley 2016; Knight 2015; Raisio, Valkama, and Peltola 2014.

13. On the “deep expressive and symbolic meaning” of political rights, which matters apart from the instrumental benefit of exercising them, see Nussbaum 2009: 343, 347; Schem- mel 2011: 141.

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assumes that human proxies have better access to politically-relevant knowledge than animals themselves. But in fact humans are epistemi- cally impaired. Our knowledge of DAs⸻their needs, interests, or po- tential ways of flourishing⸻is deeply impoverished by bias, self-in- terest and failure to recognize how their ways of being are profoundly shaped by the ways we stunt their opportunities. For centuries we have viewed them as beings destined to serve various purposes for us, and their current living conditions make it almost impossible for them to display or develop their potential in ways that challenge our biased and limited views of them (Blattner, Donaldson, and Wilcox 2020). Better knowledge requires creating opportunities for DAs, as individ- uals, to explore options and to express preferences about different pos- sible lives and social arrangements. They are the experts on many di- mensions of their individual subjective good, and we can only access this knowledge if they are able to engage in processes of exploration, contestation, and self-representation. Recent work on epistemic injus- tice (Fricker 2007) suggests that the powerful are inevitably biased in their assessment of the capacities and interests of those denied politi- cal voice, a bias which cannot be overcome simply by mandating that the powerful become more knowledgeable or explicit in their reason- ing and justification for decisions, but only through participation and push back by the represented (Anderson 2015). Similarly, disability scholars insist that the remedy for epistemic failure is not just more knowledgeable and empathetic trustees, but the active participation of people with disability themselves⸻achieving “participatory parity” for all members of society. (Davy 2015)

In my view, these are all powerful moral and epistemic reasons for enabling political participation for DAs. As we will see, enabling this participation in- evitably includes a role for human representatives, but that role needs to be em- bedded within a larger story of animals’ direct political voice and participation.

What kinds of participation are meaningful and possible for DAs? As noted earlier, we need to consider participation at two different levels: (1) de- mocratizing the existing landscape of citizenship—“bringing citizenship to the places and spaces where membership and participation are meaningful to the individuals involved” (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2016: 3); (2) building a new democratic commons, or animal agora, in which animals are empowered to co-author the fundamental nature of political community alongside us. I think both have an important role to play, each with distinctive challenges. I will explore them in turn.

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2. Democratizing the Existing Landscape of Citizenship

The starting point for thinking about participation is a commitment to DA’s “macro-agency” (Donaldson and Kymlica 2016).14 Macro-agency involves two core ideas: (1) DAs are capable of leading different kinds of lives, involv- ing different kinds of social relationships with humans, members of their own species or other species, as well as different kinds of work and leisure, inhabit- ing different kinds of geographies; (2) DAs have an interest in exploring and choosing amongst these different options.

While DAs can’t abstractly reflect on options about different forms of ac- tivity or different social relationships, they can experience them, and develop informed preferences, interests and individual identities. They can develop embodied capacities for framing (having a goal, intention, desire), revising (changing one’s goal, intention, desire) and pursuing (taking action to achieve one’s goal, intention or desire) that good through experiencing, choosing and doing. The only way to discover these individual scripts of the good life is to provide a reasonable range of opportunities for animals, and then respond ap- propriately to their indicated proclivities, preferences, and choices.15 Humans play a key role in enabling this agency by creating and modifying different kinds of environments and opportunities in response to animals’ expressions of interest, preference, resistance, intent, and developing identity. If, on the other hand, we mold animals (and their adaptive preferences) to fit roles of our choosing, we deprive them of the opportunity to explore and possibly dis- cover a preferred life, by their own lights.16 We also deny them the agency 14. Macro-agency is distinguished from the kinds of “micro-agency” sometimes enabled for

animal companions. Humans may allow their companion dog to choose between different toys and food (and these are important choices), but macro-agency would ask whether this dog wants to be a human’s companion in the first place, rather than, say, a free roaming village dog, or a dog who works outside the home.

15. See Meijer 2019 and Driessen 2014 on how animals can “express preferences when pro- vided with a range of non-coercive alternatives” providing “humans learn to be respon- sive” to those articulations of preference. See Blattner 2020 for a detailed exploration of animal deliberation, choice, assent, dissent and consent regarding work options.

16. Cochrane argues that animals “are not harmed when they are interfered with, used for par- ticular purposes, or even have their desires shaped and moulded by others, granted doing so does not harm their wellbeing” (Cochrane 2012: 73). Thus, while they have a right to “membership, not suffering, and continued life,” they do not have a right to choose their own work (Cochrane 2016: 31). “[S]ubjecting an external will on them, say through di- recting them to the performance of certain kinds of labour, is not intrinsically problematic in the way that it is for persons” (Cochrane 2016: 20). For a critique of Cochrane’s view on the distinction between autonomy and wellbeing, and how this relates to the right to freely chosen labour, see Blattner 2020 and Côté-Boudreau 2019. The idea that animals are not harmed by being molded to serve human purposes assumes that humans already know in advance what an animal’s good is, and whether a certain kind of activity is con- sistent with their wellbeing. This is antithetical to a participatory ethic in which animals

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that comes from making choices, and learning to make better choices (Yeates 2018; Blattner 2020).

This process of enabled agency is (or can be) deliberative⸻involving mu- tual reason-giving and justification, though not in the usual discursive sense. Imagine that I want to introduce my pig friend Stella to the joys of swimming. I know that she is well adapted to swimming, and that in general she likes various forms of activity and play, but Stella had an unfortunate freak early experience with water and is now afraid. I can’t explain to her that she may have a mistaken idea of swimming, and the reasons why she might really love it if she gave it another chance, although I’m fairly confident this is true. But I might, carefully and gradually, use her favourite treats to coax her to approach the water again, test it out, build up her courage to try again. (This only works if I have already built a relation of trust with her, and she is willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.)17 She might wonder why I’m encouraging and tempt- ing her into the water, which she has made quite clear she dislikes. But if we make careful progress to the point that she actually experiences swimming, then eureka, she can rediscover what swimming really is like, and (some of) my reasons for wanting her to try it (which might include the silky resistance of water against skin, the delicious weightlessness of floating, the refracted light and eerie quiet of underwater worlds, the joys of splish-splashing). My behaviour, which had been mystifying, now becomes reasonable and justified to her.18 At this stage, she might still decide that she prefers the mud wallow to swimming (and I will learn that I was wrong that she would really love it), but she will have better knowledge of what she is rejecting, and I will know that she is not rejecting it for the wrong reason (one unfortunate and misleading experience).

explore and discover their good, in conjunction with others, as individuals and members of collectivities.

17. Trainers of dogs and other DAs rely on animals’ willingness to trust us and imitate our ac- tions even if the purpose of the activity isn’t immediately apparent, and can only become so after a chain of actions are put together revealing a larger purpose. This special kind of embodied observational learning is called “overimitation,” and until recently was incor- rectly thought to be human-specific (Huber et al. 2020).

18. This process of reason giving needn’t be initiated by humans. Say I’m out on a trail and an unknown dog approaches me uttering short, sharp barks. I can ignore her barks as meaning- less, or I can assume that she is an intentional agent seeking help, but unable to articulate her reasons for accosting me. If I acknowledge and follow her, her ‘reasons’ will emerge when she leads me to her human friend lying unconscious in a gully. She can’t explain why she thinks it’s justified to accost a stranger in an emergency, but she has reasons for doing so that she can show me, allowing me to respond to her reasons appropriately.

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This embodied process of mutual justification is simply not captured by standard accounts of deliberation in terms of ideal speech or public reason.19 We need a revised account that recognizes that deliberation and mutual justifi- cation can occur as part of embodied experiential processes requiring trust and temporary suspension of judgement so that mutual understanding can unfold through time and space, not language. It is a deliberative world of showing, not telling.20 From this perspective, far from being politically voiceless beings with relatively fixed interests deducible by human ‘experts,’ DAs are eloquent communicators to those who listen, and willing interlocutors in exploring how to live together.

How can we draw on this account of relational and embodied agency to enable animals’ political participation? As I noted earlier, one strategy is to identify those existing roles and relationships that animals occupy in society that are (or could be) compatible with respect for animals’ basic rights, and then to democratize these roles, empowering animals to renegotiate the terms of these roles and relationships. The vast majority of existing roles for animals (as killable commodities in farms, labs, and zoos) are inherently incompat- ible with animals’ basic rights, and so must be abolished. But some roles and relationships needn’t violate animals’ fundamental rights, and are potentially reformable through democratization and “citizenization” processes.

Consider DAs in private homes or in various workplaces (e.g., no-kill farms, law enforcement, search and rescue, conservation work, transportation work, cancer detection, therapy, control of invasive plant species). Can we bring meaningful participation into these spaces and places? Feminists have long challenged idealized conceptions of the private sphere as a realm of in- dividual freedom and autonomy, arguing that it functions to shield forms of domination from public view, and structures gender inequality by effacing the contributions of domestic and reproductive work to the public good (Pate- man 1983). This problem is even starker for DAs. As Eisen notes, the legal construction of the private sphere “uses the law to create a lawless space.” It

19. A reviewer questioned the use of terms like “agency,” “deliberation,” “justification” and “reason-giving” to describe this process, suggesting these terms only apply to interactions amongst rationally reflective human language-users. In my view, such a narrow interpreta- tion of these terms is out of step with evolving usage in several fields. However, I am not primarily concerned about what labels we use. Readers should feel free to replace “agency” with “participation,” or replace “mutual reason-giving” with “mutual and iterative pro- cesses of claims-making, learning, negotiation and will-formation.” The point is that we need to recognize these processes, and how they are requirements of interspecies justice, whether we expand existing concepts to cover them or create new ones.

20. This revised conception of deliberation connects to Silvers and Francis’s (2005) concep- tion of contract as ongoing relations of trust, not one-time negotiation; and to new concep- tions of assent/consent as ongoing embodied processes, not a one-time agreement (Blattner 2020).

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“supports and exacerbates background conditions of deeply unequal power, then absolves itself of responsibility for abuse” (Eisen 2017: 7). This is the sphere where DAs are subject to the arbitrary authority often of a single human (guardian, caregiver, co-worker) who imposes countless daily decisions affect- ing all dimensions of their lives, and where they are vulnerable to violence and domination, and to the erasure of their work and contribution.

In short, DAs are not free agents in the private sphere.21 Their home or workplace is always someone else’s castle, and only to a limited and contingent degree is it a space of liberty where they can explore, revise, and pursue their good. Families, guardians, co-workers or employers may individually choose to treat DAs as members whose interests should shape collective decision- making, but this depends entirely on the goodwill of the humans involved.

Thus the home and workplace are crucial sites in which DA voices must be empowered. And indeed we see growing calls for the legal recognition of the interests of animals as workers and as family members in custody battles, and access to public services (Kymlicka 2017; Cochrane 2016; Coulter 2016). This is to be welcomed, but to date it has primarily involved enhanced passive fiduciary representation of DAs by their friends, co-workers, and guardians, not democratic participation by DAs themselves.

What would it mean to truly democratize these roles and relationships? One strategy for supporting animals’ autonomy in the private sphere is sug- gested by the microboard structure pioneered in the disability community, which helps to blur the private/public line.22 Microboards are non-profit enti- ties comprising a group of friends, acquaintances and co-workers of an in- dividual requiring supported agency⸻all of whom are involved in personal, responsive relationships with this individual, and all of whom are liked and trusted by him/her.23 Microboards act as advisory and advocacy bodies, offer- ing multiple perspectives, mutual correctives, and diverse skills and contacts which can support the individual in framing, revising and pursuing their good. By formalizing a network of interdependent agents for vulnerable individuals, microboards enlarge the sphere of agency for them.

Applied to DAs, the role of microboard members would be to volunteer to live or work alongside an animal, engaging in ongoing, responsive adjust- ments and observations of their shared environment and activities, in light

21. Note that this would be true even if animals were legally recognized as persons not prop- erty. They would still be passive wards of their guardians, not full citizens.

22. See http://www.velacanada.org/ for a discussion of microboards. 23. The legislation enabling microboards in British Columbia asks whether the person with

cognitive disability exhibits “feelings of approval or disapproval” towards Board mem- bers, and whether the “relationship with the representative . . . is characterized by trust,” incorporating an assent model of authorization (Representation Agreement Act, Part 2, Sec- tion 8(2); http://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/96405_01).

723Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge

of the animals’ developing identity. Animals would choose (authorize) their representatives through expressions of trust and affiliation. There are objec- tive measures (facial expressions, body language, vocalizations, heart rates, hormones) to assist in this assessment. Board members could be obliged to justify their representations of DAs on an ongoing basis via individual port- folios providing documentation available for review and contestation by third parties (similar to the way teachers and other caregivers construct portfolios for children).24 If board members were demonstrably to lose the trust of their animal co-workers or companions, or be suspected by third parties of manipu- lating animals, or distorting their representations of them, their position could be challenged.

The microboard would be focused primarily on an animal’s individual script of the good within the home or workplace (structuring experiences for her to explore, discover what she likes to do, what environments she likes, what she’s good at) and decision-making (what activities to choose, what friends or co-workers to engage with). The knowledge and power from these boards could then be fed upstream into more collective decision-making (e.g., union policies or family law). Policy changes at this level could in turn be evaluated back at the board level, assessing how animals respond to them in an ongoing iterative process. Over time, this could lead to gradual transformation of a liv- ing/working place that started out looking like a typical more-than-human idea of a ‘home’ or ‘business,’ and ended up looking like⸻well, time would tell how these spaces and places would be altered by participation of DAs.

This model helps to show the complexity of interdependent political agen- cy. The embodied ways in which DAs can be political participants (voicing their interests, assenting to or resisting choices, deliberating through doing, authorizing trusted representatives) are intimately tied up with the capacity of humans to be creative, responsive, and responsible co-agents. I believe that many humans are capable of fulfilling this role, and indeed would welcome it. But there is no question that democratic voice and participation for DAs is dependent on their human co-citizens in profound ways. This includes depend- ing on humans to generate and frame the right questions in response to existing

24. This might seem bureaucratically burdensome, even controlling and intrusive, but it’s im- portant to note that this isn’t a new intrusion of law and policy into the lives of DAs, but a restructuring of “law’s relations” (Nedelsky 2011: 72) in order to replace a legal framework that structures and sanctions human domination and exploitation of DAs with one that supports their rights and agency. The exercise of power should be burdensome for those exercising it, and subject to checks and balances. For example, advocates for children emphasize the importance of alloparenting⸻cooperative parenting practices that make authority over children more dispersed and accountable. Children are better off when multiple responsible adults know them, care about them, and are in a position to contest the representations of their primary caregivers (Gheaus 2020).

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structures of society, structures that organize human and animal life in very specific ways, and constrain our ideas about what is possible.

As a result, the strategy of democratizing existing relationships, while essential, is incomplete, leaving too much determined by historical legacies that DAs didn’t participate in shaping. Starting from existing roles and re- lationships, which confine DAs to particular spaces and associations, limits the kinds of voice that can emerge, and the opportunities for reimagining and exploring alternative societies. This is particularly debilitating for DAs, given that their capacities for “framing, revising and pursuing” the good are embod- ied capacities, dependent on engaging in meaningful activity with interdepen- dent agents. Unlike many humans, DAs cannot articulate political imaginar- ies, realistic utopias, and visions of justice. They need to actually experience alternative possibilities.

Can DAs participate, not just in reforming particular roles or relationships, but in shaping collective political futures? This leads to the second possible strategy for participation.

3. The Animal Agora

If DAs are to be co-creators of a shared future, we need to supplement delib- erations on abstract visions of political futures with iterative processes of em- bodied discovery and responsiveness. New political imaginaries can emerge through interspecies interactions, but we need to create a canvas in physical space not simply in discursive space. We need places for unpredictable en- counters that allow thinking outside the box of existing human-animal rela- tionships, and we need to empower these spaces as places of multi-species contestation, deliberation, and “creative interaction” (Nedelsky 2011). This leads us to the idea of a new public commons, or animal agora.

In the first instance, this means literally unleashing DAs⸻drastically re- ducing their confinement, enclosure, and segregation from others. This doesn’t mean abandoning DAs or putting them in peril, but it does mean releasing them (with adequate socialization, support, and protection of animals and hu- mans) from confined private and work spheres into public spaces where they are freer to act outside the immediate control of humans. The disability move- ment uses the idea of a ‘least restrictive environment’ to describe the principle that while some restrictions are necessary, they must always be justified (as opposed to being based on default assumptions that certain individuals don’t belong in public space). In other words, rather than asking how to ensure that the exercise of power by a particular human over a particular animal in a par- ticular space is responsive to the animal’s expressed interests, we should first

725Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge

ask whether that animal needs to be subject to that human in the first place, or needs to be confined to that particular space.

Related to reduced confinement is the need for desegregation. DAs don’t just need greater freedom of movement in public space; they need opportuni- ties for spontaneous citizen-to-citizen encounters, mutual learning and accom- modation, and “public things, shared common things, over which to argue, around which to gather” (Honig 2015: 623). In other words, they need public spaces that simultaneously reduce human control of DAs, while creating an enlarged canvas upon which DAs and humans can reimagine and rewrite their relationships. I illustrate how this might occur below.

Some commentators argue that animals are too ‘unruly’ to belong in the public sphere⸻a worry that goes back to Plato’s vision of the excessive free- dom of DAs as the hallmark of anarchic democracy (Planinc 2014). But the charge of unruliness is unfair, as many DAs are adept at negotiating and com- plying with social norms, and with appropriate support can negotiate mul- tiple dimensions of highly complex societies (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2014; Blattner, Donaldson, and Wilcox 2020).25 Freely-roaming DA citizens would certainly create some inconvenience and burdens for human citizens, but bur- dens and inconveniences are part and parcel of any shared social life. What matters is whether anyone is unfairly treated or unduly burdened in the distri- bution of burdens and benefits.26

Creating a desegregated public space would require many changes, such as restricting cars, reducing pollution and hazards, guarding our shrub borders, stepping around sheep pats, redesigning access to public buildings, and giving over more land to green spaces. But none of those changes is necessarily unfair or unduly burdensome, and indeed they seem mild compared to the burdens and inconveniences we routinely impose on DAs. Moreover, free and deseg- regated interaction is a pre-condition of citizenship, creating the conditions under which citizens can jointly negotiate and shape society. So reallocating the inconveniences of social life is both an outcome and a precondition of fair decision-making.

The real obstacle to the creation of desegregated public space is not the unruliness of animals, but rather the systematic enclosure, dismantlement and privatization of the public commons. Releasing animals into desegregated pub- lic spaces is moot if public space and public things have disappeared. Much has been written about the negative social consequences of the privatization

25. See also Lorini 2018 and Vincent, Ring, and Andrews 2018 for helpful discussions of ‘normativity’ in nonhuman animals, though they are focused primarily on primates and cetaceans.

26. See Simplican 2015 on how anxiety about being burdened by people with intellectual dis- abilities underlies their exclusion both from political theory and from public space.

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of public space, but it’s important to consider why this is particularly unjust in relation to DAs.

Private property rights are often defended as a crucial component of the individual right to liberty and autonomous agency, enabling us to pursue our particular interests⸻as long as we do so in ways consistent with others enjoy- ing the same right (Waldron 2004). But given capacity-based restrictions on their ability to exercise contract and property rights, DAs (and many humans) simply do not have access to the liberty and self-actualization opportunities that rights to property and contract are said to protect. DAs can’t control and deploy fungible resources. They can’t buy up land to protect it from ecological destruction. They can’t own and manage farms or factories that produce food that is healthy for them, or products that are important to them. For individuals whose agency is fundamentally relational and social, a foundation of liberty built upon independent control of privately-owned space and resources is a poor fit.27 Put another way, the problem is not just that DAs are ignored in de- cisions about the exercise of public power, but also shut out from the exercise of private property rights.

There may still be good reasons for allowing some private control of space and resources, if such appropriation meets various provisos of not harming others. But animals have almost always been ignored when applying these provisos (Milburn 2016). And given that DAs are unable to engage in the rel- evant kind of appropriation, we must recognize that they (and others without the capacity to sign contracts) have the most to lose from the loss of public spaces and things. This creates a prima facie argument for the reinstatement of a robust public commons, and a high threshold of justification and account- ability for private appropriation.28

An expansive public commons, therefore, is a fundamental issue of dis- tributive justice. It is also a precondition of political participation for those citi- zens who require a canvas in space (not just the discursive imagination) for ex- ploring and negotiating new forms of relationship, new roles, new institutions

27. I don’t deny that DAs have interests in controlling certain kinds of personal property and space, or that property rights could be designed to protect some of these interests. However, they cannot as individuals accumulate and manipulate property through contractual rela- tions in ways that advance their individual freedom and autonomy within mixed human- animal society. It is worth noting that the best-known account of animals’ property rights (Hadley 2015) focuses on the property rights of wild animals, which are in effect rights to collective territory/habitat, rather than the property rights of individual DAs.

28. An interesting development here is the constitutional climate change lawsuit sponsored by Our Children’s Trust, claiming that “through the government’s affirmative actions in causing climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources” (https:// www.ourchildrenstrust.org/). DAs have a similar claim that of state failure to protect their interests in “public trust resources.”

727Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge

and new social configurations. Crucial to the idea of the commons, in Ostrom’s view, is not just that land, resources and institutions are protected from private appropriation. It is equally important that they not be subject to tyrannical state or bureaucratic power, but subject to local custom and law so that “those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules,” in ways that are “respected by outside authorities” through a diffused system or “nested tiers” of power (Ostrom 1990). It is this combination of inalienable public space under empowered local control that achieves the preconditions for embodied and meaningful political participation by DAs⸻forging a connection between deliberation and a physical space of meaningful embodied action.29

While enlarged opportunities for spontaneous citizen-to-citizen encoun- ters between humans and DAs in public space are a precondition of political participation, they don’t automatically translate into political decision-mak- ing.30 What are the mechanisms for turning public space into a democratic commons in which DAs participate “in modifying the rules”? In section 2, I introduced microboards as possible mechanisms for linking DAs’ embodied participation with collective decision-making. But those models are not feasi- ble for the commons, given the different nature of human-animal relationships in this context. It is one thing for humans to act as interdependent agents for DAs with whom they have an ongoing personal relationship within the con- fines of a home or workplace. But it’s hard to see how this model could scale up to the public commons, given that one of its defining features is precisely that interactions are dispersed, multivalent, spontaneous and unpredictable. Unless a DA’s family-based or work-based representatives follow her every- where in public, she will not have access to representatives she trusts and has authorized.

29. The multispecies commons can be seen as a particular kind of deliberative forum, one defined in terms of the geography relevant to particular communities of DAs and their interactions with human co-citizens. It is a task for another day to consider how expan- sive a public commons is required to support DA political agency. A further task would be to consider the place of liminal animals in this public commons, and its structures of representation.

30. This reveals a limitation of Simplican’s discussion of desegregation as a citizenship strat- egy in the disability movement. She argues persuasively that desegregation can generate spontaneous and transformative citizen encounters, including the possibility that neuro- typical humans will stop seeing relationships with people with disabilities in terms of bur- densomeness and anxiety, and instead see creativity and promise. She endorses “Arendt’s conception of politics as spontaneous, plural, and public action” (Simplican 2015: 101). But she doesn’t propose an alternative vision of “public action” (replacing Arendt’s empha- sis on political speech) beyond an expectation of transformation of neurotypical citizens, who then internalize the interests of persons with disabilities. This still looks like passive or fiduciary representation, and it’s not clear that Simplican envisages any mechanism structuring direct participation in public decision-making.

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We can address this challenge by tying representation to spaces rather than individual animals. For example, agents could be chosen to represent DAs with respect to a defined public commons (bounded land, most likely, but per- haps a resource or practice, like the public transportation system). These ‘com- munity agents’ could be authorized by a process similar to the members of microboards (i.e., responsive to DAs’ indications of trust and liking), and held accountable by similar processes of record-keeping and oversight by third par- ties. However, instead of focusing on the individual good of individual DAs, the community agent’s role would be to observe, analyze, and be responsive to the more collective dimensions of DAs’ good within a defined commons. On this basis, she might then propose modifications to facilitate free movement and safety, minimize conflicts, take up new opportunities inspired by spon- taneous encounters, and propose new institutions and practices to create new public goods for all. These community agents would exercise decision-making power (directly, or through a coordinating body) on the commons governing body (and upwards through ‘nested tiers’). Once again, there would be an evi- dentiary and justificatory process that runs up and down the decision-making tree, so that decisions are ultimately traceable back to embodied actions and negotiations between DAs and humans, and contestable by them (and their microboards) in ongoing iterations of the process.

Riverside

This may sound overly-abstract, so what might this process look like in prac- tice? A possible commons might be a region of a city bounded by major trans- portation arteries or natural features (multi-lane roads, train corridors, large bodies of water) which create external barriers to the free movement of DAs, but which define a significant internal area of free movement and associa- tion. Imagine that this community—let’s call it Riverside—decides to move towards a ‘least restrictive environment’ for DAs, creating and enlarging “a public sphere that embraces their presence” rather than erecting barriers (Anita Silvers quoted in Knight 2015: 97), and institutes mechanisms for their politi- cal participation. And imagine that the existing resident DAs include dog and cats, and pigs and a few horses, and a small flock of goats and sheep who browse the city park at the edge of the neighbourhood, abutting the river. The first step is to free animals, safely, within the commons. Cars are dramatically restricted (no through streets, dramatically lower speed limits, car-free zones). Leash laws and enclosure requirements are relaxed for DAs (except for their own safety, or because they demonstrate that they are unable to comply with

729Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge

social norms).31 Restrictions on animals in restaurants and commercial spac- es are relaxed. Various precautions are taken⸻installing strategic grilles so the sheep can’t get into family gardens, installing fences to keep animals and humans out of sensitive waterfowl nesting areas along the river, and around community vegetable gardens (with extra plantings just outside the fence for animals to enjoy). This large urban park will likely be a gravitation point for free-roaming DAs given the attractions of the river, open space, other animals, etc., so a park warden is appointed who keeps an eye out for humans and ani- mals who run into difficulties.

One unanticipated problem that arises is that dogs get even filthier than usual playing in the park (from muck at the river’s edge, or sheep droppings that haven’t yet been collected to fertilize the community garden). Dogs, and their human friends, want to be able to go to the nearby cafés, but proprietors don’t appreciate the mess. The community agent proposes the development of a solar/rainwater outdoor shower complex at the park, so humans can give their (willing) dogs or pigs or goats a quick wash. Over time, it becomes ap- parent that the showers aren’t just for DAs. People without good facilities at home start using the showers, as do long-distance bike commuters on their way to work. Gradually the complex is redesigned as a multipurpose commu- nity bathhouse, creating employment, and becoming an unanticipated centre of community life.

Meanwhile, the park swimming pool, which was fenced to keep the ani- mals out (for their own safety, and to keep the pool clean), is also a source of controversy. Many people want to swim with their DA companions, and vice versa, and the river is muddy and unappealing. So a diversion pool is built (with water flowing in from the river, and back to the river), with ramps as well as stairs so animals have easy access. This has an unexpected benefit in that all the people who avoided the chlorinated pool because of allergies now

31. All residents of Riverside (including humans) would need to be socialized into the norms of interspecies citizenship. Goats who jump fences and destroy gardens might have their freedom of movement circumscribed in certain ways. Humans who speed around on bi- cycles injuring chickens who can’t get out of their path in time might have their licenses suspended. When animals ‘break a rule,’ it could mean they just haven’t learned it, or that they know it but don’t like it and are expressing their voice in favour of renegotiating it. Or it could mean that they are rejecting life in Riverside at a deeper level, and need the opportunity to explore life in a different kind of community. For example, Greta the goat might be jumping fences because she just hasn’t learned yet that she’s not supposed to do that, and has no objection to complying once she does learn the norm. Or, on investigation we may learn that Greta is simply mad for lupins, which are only available in enclosed gardens, and her actions are best interpreted as a call for lupins to be grown in areas she has access to. Or Greta might be more profoundly rejecting life in Riverside, finding its boundaries confining instead of enabling, and expressing her desire to move to a rural com- munity with more space.

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have somewhere to swim. It also turns out that kids who are afraid of the wa- ter and of learning to swim are transformed by the opportunity to do so with water-loving pigs. The success of the diversion pool leads to increased interest in the water quality of the river, leading to increased political participation by Riverside citizens in deliberations about management of that (differently nested) commons.

As park use increases, it’s decided that a flock of chickens could be wel- comed into the ecosystem, safely cooped up at night, and protected during the day by the presence of humans and other DAs. The chickens eat bugs and help to fertilize the community gardens. They also tend to wander off into the ad- joining community, but are usually a welcome presence in backyards, or com- peting with the pigeons and sparrows at outdoor cafes. The roosters are more controversial, and many people initially object to their morning cacophony. Their coops are moved to the end of the park furthest removed from human homes to minimize the problem. But it turns out that some people come to wel- come the morning call of the roosters, and a new communal spiritual practice springs up around this ritual greeting of the new day.

Note that little of this process is “intentional” in Ladwig’s sense. (Re- call his objection that while animals can “causally influence our public spaces through their activities, they do not refer to them intentionally”). And yet, ar- guably, a new political imaginary gradually emerges, instantiating a deepen- ing of community relationships, and possibilities for multispecies flourishing. A community bathhouse wasn’t on the political radar until responsiveness to animals’ embodied participation led to the ‘discovery’ of an unmet community need/possibility. It’s true that some humans (especially the community agents) need to be empowered to engage in observation, reflection, hypothesis for- mation, design, response⸻and political deliberation and policy determination with various stakeholders at a more abstract level. But most of the actors (hu- man and animal) are engaged in a much more concrete and immediate process of negotiating their desires, intentions and interactions⸻often being surprised to discover what they want/like/need, not (or not primarily) by rational analy- sis, but through embodied experience of mini-experiments in living. This alter- native ‘deliberation’ is made possible, not by restricting political participation to public reasoners, but by returning politics to a public commons of enabled space and voice.

Conclusion

There is a serious democratic deficit in relation to DA members of society. The moral foundation of democracy is the right of all who are governed to participate in shaping shared society on a basis of equality and respect; it is

731Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge

not a perfectionist or assimilationist requirement specifying the mechanism by which this must be achieved (e.g., through intentional acts of articulating a vi- sion of imagined political community). Human capacities for imagination and for rational reflection and deliberation are essential elements of political life, but they aren’t prerequisites for including all individual members of the polity in meaningful democratic participation. It is possible to envision “framing, revising and pursing” the good, deliberating, giving reasons, providing mutual justification, and engaging in co-authoring of the laws as more than purely dis- cursive activities. They can be achieved through embodied interaction in trust- ing relationships, and scaled up within the intimate sphere, the workplace, and the public commons. I have described how the mechanisms of enabled voice (through interdependent, responsive, authorized, and accountable relation- ships for representation) within a dramatically enlarged public commons, are a good place to start building this inclusive (and renewed) democracy. There are obviously enormous practical and conceptual challenges confronting the animal agora. But as we have seen at every step of the way, the alternative is to retreat to a cramped and exclusionary conception of democracy that arbitrarily narrows the range of actors who are invited to participate, and the forms of knowledge and communication that are solicited.

Queen’s University [email protected]

Acknowledgements Draft versions of this paper were presented to the Queen’s University Political Philosophy Reading Group, and the GRÉEA colloquium at the University of Montreal. Thank you to all of the participants for their helpful feedback. I would particularly like to thank Christiane Bailey, Alasdair Cochrane, Avigail Eisenberg, Valéry Giroux, Rich Healey, Will Kymlicka, Eva Meijer, Siobhan O’Sullivan, Angie Pepper, Dinesh Wadiwel and an anonymous reviewer for comments that led to substantial improvements in the paper.

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