Le Séminaire sur les concepts fondamentaux du droit animalier est une série de rencontres mensuelles destinées à approfondir la compréhension des concepts clés du droit animalier. Chaque séance explore un concept particulier, notamment les notions d’être, de sensibilité, de bien-être, d’impératifs biologiques, de sécurité, de pouvoirs juridiques et de collaboration. 

Inscription requise : https://forms.office.com/r/ZK1iZx1FHR

Déroulement

La séance dure 1h30, le dernier mercredi du mois, de 11h30 à 13h.

Chaque séance vise à cerner un concept en particulier et les pistes d’interrogation afférentes propres au contexte du droit animalier. Une personne anime et structure une discussion conviviale et dynamique entre les participant·es.

La rencontre a lieu en format hybride. La majorité du groupe se rencontre au campus de Longueuil de l’Université de Sherbrooke (local L1-11305 en général; local L1-3455 les 29 janvier 2025, 30 avril 2025, 28 mai 2025). Un accès Zoom est mis à la disposition des participant·es sur demande.

Organisation

Le Séminaire est organisé par Valéry Giroux, Marie-Pier Jolicoeur, Michaël Lessard, Daphnée B. Ménard et Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert sous l’égide de l’Observatoire québécois de droit animalier, le tout en collaboration avec le Groupe de recherche sur les humanités juridiques, le Groupe de réflexion en droit privé, le Centre de recherche en éthique et le Groupe de recherche en éthique environnementale et animale.

Calendrier

Serrin Rutledge-Prior, Queen's postdoc in Animal Ethics, will be presenting her talk "On Animal Liberty" to the Queen's Department of Philosophy Colloquium on October 31, 2024. This talk will take place from 4-6 pm in Watson Hall, Room 517. All welcome!

On the 27^th of September 2024, Doris Schneeberger (University of Vienna) will present her paper “Embodied Institutional Work.” She will discuss animal sanctuary politics, ethnographic methods in animal studies, and strategies for social change. The discussion will take place from 11:00-12:30 on the 27^th of September. If you are interested in attending the discussion, please contact Sue Donaldson to receive a copy of the paper to be read in advance (sld8@queensu.ca).

On May 4, 2024, APPLE will host a Junior Scholar’s Workshop at Queen’s on Violence, Animals, and Zoodemocracy. The workshop is devoted to the recent work of APPLE postdoctoral fellow, Pablo Perez Castelló.

The first session, “Is Seeing Believing?”, draws on material from a book-in-progress chapter about an ongoing puzzle confronting social justice movements and political scientists/theorists, namely: Why does knowing about injustice not lead to political transformation? For example, in recent decades the extent of undercover footage, media coverage, and mainstream documentaries exposing what happens in slaughterhouses and factory farms has dramatically increased. Yet, to the consternation of animal advocates, this has not prompted demands for change. Pablo’s work challenges the idea that seeing is believing, arguing that this neglects the role that language plays in shaping our very subjectivities to hold dominion over animals, and hence humans’ ability to “see” violence against animals. It is belief that shapes what is seen, not the other way around.

The commentator for the first session is Dinesh Wadiwel, Associate Professor in Human Rights and Socio-legal Studies, University of Sydney.

The second session, “Centring Animals”, focuses on identifying the methodological, conceptual, and normative conditions for reducing the violence that humans inflict on animals and to co-author a more just future together. A number of scholars in various fields argue for the need to start from the voices of the oppressed, and recently this has included animal theorists insisting that thinking about animals and developing an account of interspecies justice should start from animals’ own points-of-view. While welcoming the call to “centre animals”, Pablo’s work argues that the use of this terminology is inconsistent, leading to incompatible visions of justice. His work addresses what it means to centre animals, why this matters, and provides a normative framework for centring animals in practice.

The commentator for the second session is Angie Pepper, Lecturer at the School for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Roehampton.

The third session, “On Animal Self-Governance”, focuses on a separate paper that makes an intervention in the political turn in animal rights theory, arguing that domesticated animals can maintain the socio-political web (the “fabric”) that holds together the political communities they share with humans. Members of democratic communities generally do things that, together, sustain those democracies, whether cooperating, reciprocating, acting according to a sense of justice, helping others, and so on. These practices are framed by social norms and values that help to coordinate actions and resolve conflicts, and without which our political communities would fray. Pablo’s paper explores whether these activities, social norms, and values are also found in multispecies communities such as farmed animal sanctuaries. He does this by analyzing the ethnographic data he gathered at VINE sanctuary during two months of fieldwork.

The commentator for the third session is Stefan Dolgert, Professor in Political Science at Brock University.

[Photo credit (cow): We Animals Media -WAM32048]

On September 3, 2022, APPLE will co-organize a workshop with Julia Gibson (Antioch University, Keene, Vermont) on “Decolonial Interspecies Justice”, hosted under the auspices of Antioch’s  Environmental Studies Department. The workshop focuses on three broad and inter-related clusters of questions:

• questions concerning the role of land and territory for decolonial (and) interspecies justice. How does land fit into transformative interspecies justice? Can attention to land and territory provide a way of bridging interspecies justice and social justice, particularly issues of colonialism and racial justice?

• conceptual questions about the meaning of justice in interspecies contexts. Is “species” a good framework with which to approach more-than-human justice? Is transformative justice exclusively forward looking, or does it also have an orientation to the past? What are the relationships between restoration, reconciliation, and transformation in particular interspecies contexts under settler-colonialism? Are the different conceptions of transformative and/or decolonial interspecies justice in deep conflict, or do they pull in different directions?

• practical questions of mobilizing goals and strategies, and of models and frames. Are there successful examples or models of decolonial interspecies relations? What coalitions are needed for decolonial interspecies justice? What sorts of narratives help to inspire a commitment to decolonial interspecies justice? How can/must our positionality as settler, Indigenous, or a descendant of enslaved peoples shape our strategies? Can the state, and the law, be a vehicle for transformative justice, or are the spaces for pursuing decolonial interspecies justice always outside of and against state power?
 

Speakers:

• Charlotte Blattner (Law, University of Berne)
• Julia Gibson (Environmental Studies, Antioch)
• Lori Gruen (Philosophy, Wesleyan)  
• Audra Mitchell (Canada Research Chair in Global Political Ecology, Wilfrid Laurier University)
• Kelly Struthers Montford (Sociology, University of British Columbia)
• Rebekah Sinclair (Philosophy, University of Oregon)
• Jishnu Guha-Majumdar (Politics, Butler University

[Photo Credit: We Animals Media - WAM14260]