Citoyen Napoleon: How animals are turned into post-animal citizens

The position of animals in politics over the ages is one of the most interesting, rewarding and underdeveloped topics of research. Its interest derives from two sources: it sheds a light on the practical implications of (changes in) abstract ethical positions – one can compare this into research on the effect of the Stoic conception of human equality on the practice of slavery) – and, as a kind of mirror image of humanity, it helps to understand the self-perception and -conception of humans. Against that background, I intend to argue that at least Western societies have, over the past two centuries of post-naturalist (post-Aristotelian, Enlightenment) philosophy and ethics, developed in quick succession (and building forth on predecessors) at least five views of the proper place of animals in politics. These views are not developing towards an ever clearer appreciation of animals as distinct from humans, as unique in themselves and so forth – we are not talking about a genealogy of discourses of subjection and exclusion only, but, in announcing the slow abolition of nature, also of liberation and inclusion. They are in fact making it increasingly more difficult to draw the line between human and animal. Animals are increasingly integrated as (to a degree and in certain respects) partners of humans in models of politics, society and citizenship – so much so, that we can soon expect animals to be understood as both social citizens, bourgeois, and even political citizens with ‘posthuman’ rights, as citoyens. (Citoyen Napoleon refers, of course, to Comrade Napoleon, leader of the glorious animal revolution in Orwell’s Animal Farm) Support for this thesis will be derived not just from theoretical arguments from Bentham to Nussbaum, but also from political practices: the legal status of animals, the activities and platforms of animal and environmental parties and movements, etc.