On the myth of human exceptionality with attorney Macarena Montes Franceschini
What do great apes and human beings have in common? This month's episode is a conversation with animal rights attorney Macarena Montes Franceschini to see behind the mask of the law.
Conversations With Animals E2S3 is out (!!!), and includes a conversation with Macarena Montes Franceschini, an attorney with a Ph.D. in Law from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). She has been a visiting researcher at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and a Rights Research Fellow at the Brooks McCormick Jr Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, where she is currently a Visiting Fellow. She is also a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics, editor of the journal Law, Ethics and Philosophy (LEAP), a member of the Editorial Committee of the Chilean Journal of Animal Law, and the treasurer of the Great Ape Project – Spain. She has written several articles on nonhuman animal personhood, animal rights, and animal law and a book titled Animal Law in Chile.
In her article “Animal Personhood: The Quest for Recognition,” Franceschini writes,
“To date, there has only been one successful HCW case, regarding a chimpanzee named Cecilia in Argentina. Cecilia lived alone in a concrete cage at the notorious Mendoza Zoo for many years, until, following her trial, a court ordered her transfer to Brazil’s Great Ape Sanctuary, where Cecilia currently resides with other chimpanzees. The remaining legal cases this paper will discuss are either administrative, criminal, or copyright proceedings in nature, where the topic of an animal’s legal personhood has been an issue.”
Franceschini also shared this wonderful illustration she collaborated with an artist on to illustrate the dynamics of Cecilia’s case—the way the law is worn as a mask for individuals to be made legible.
designed by Delphine Perret in collaboration with École Urbaine de Lyon & Macarena Montes Franceschini
In our conversation, we unpack the idea of animal personhood, the problem with humans seeing themselves as exceptional from other animals, and the ways liberation movements can collaborate and inform each other.
“We don’t let any animal that we consume live as individuals,” says Franceschini during her appearance on Conversations With Animals. “Animal suffering clashes with the business model.”
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I hope you enjoy this month’s episode and that you enjoy learning as much from Macarena Montes Franceschini as I did.
With love,
Juliana
+ don’t forget your monthly doodle (below) :)
