When Animals Speak Toward an Interspecies Democracy

Our entanglements with other animals shape our politics, our ethics, and our very concepts. These relationships often dangerously impact the wellbeing of other animals. In this comprehensive and passionate exploration, Eva Meijer argues that other animals are agents in these relationships, with their own perspectives and experiences, their own sensibilities and capacities to resist misrepresentation. The task for us is to learn to listen to what they are telling us, and once we do we can work to enrich all of our lives. - Lori Gruen, author of Entangled Empathy: An Alternative Ethic for Our Relationships with Animals In When Animals Speak, Eva Meijer brings together years of research into a singularly revelatory text. There is much discourse these days about 'the political turn' in animal studies-such a development requires the work of Meijer to examine its own presuppositions and enabling assumptions. Her eclectic use of sources from across the philosophic spectrum is refreshing and helpful. Bravo! - Ralph Acampora, author of Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body Meijer has produced a rich, imaginative, and deeply readable book. It is one that I will come back to again and again, and one that I have had numerous conversations about with others - academics and non-academics, and (Meijer will be pleased to hear) humans and non-humans. (Metapsychology) Meijer makes the important point that humans need to consider other animals on the basis of their reality rather than relying on an anthropocentric view of them. (Choice) Ambitious ... Meijer emphasizes that animals are not passive objects for humans to ignore or argue over-or collect, Tiger King-style-but 'individuals with their own perspectives on life,' and members of communities with which our species coexists. That animals are in this sense political actors is an underrecognized and, to my mind, potentially powerful point of convergence between the animal-rights and ecological-protection movements: both traditions hold that animals have needs and wants that humans are more than capable of understanding, and should attend to. (New York Review of Books) A rich and fascinating exploration of human-animal communication, blending theoretical political ideas and scientific empirical studies. (Animal and Natural Resource Law Review)