Animal Politics: Past, Present, Future?
Abstract: Since the early 2010s, the “political turn” in animal ethics has challenged political theory’s longstanding indifference to nonhuman animals, sparking crucial debates on rights, representation, agency, and systemic transformation. Mapping the past, present, and future of the field, this paper offers critical reflection on how this literature in ‘Animal Politics’ has matured since its emergence. This includes evaluation of how it balances normative and empirical theory, the politicisation of established debates in animal studies, and the field’s evolving relationship to neighbouring literatures in animal law, animal ethics, and critical animal studies. Looking ahead, the paper discusses fruitful research frontiers for incoming scholars, including political realism, interspecies epistemology, and state legitimacy. It concludes with a provocative claim: taking animals seriously may require us to reconceptualise traditional political theory as merely a “human politics”, inviting us to radically reimagine political thought for a multispecies world.
Bio: David John Holroyd is a PhD candidate in political theory at the University of Sheffield, funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities. His research broadly addresses the themes of animal justice, state power, social identity, and the role of academic ideas in public debate.
