Political Nonhuman Animal Voices: Rethinking Language and Politics with Nonhuman Animals

The view that nonhuman animals cannot be political actors because they cannot speak is common in both philosophical tradition and political practice. This view refers to a flawed conception of political agency and, second, it ignores the fact that animals clearly do communicate, with each other and with humans. Seeing other animals as mute does not simply reflect a misunderstanding of their : it is interconnected with the way humans have defined language and politics and has led to rendering animals silent as a political group. Recently, there has been criticism of this view in different fields of study, but the topic of language has remained underexplored. This is unfortunate. In this paper, I argue we need a theory of political animal voice. I first discuss the reasons for this. In the second part of the paper, I draw on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language to rethink animal languages and interspecies communication. I end by discussing how the concepts “language-games” and “family resemblance” can shed light on political nonhuman animal practices.