The Paradox of Non-Human Rights
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This chapter draws on Costas Douzinas's work on the paradoxes of human rights to illuminate the contradictory logic underpinning the emerging discourse of non-human rights. It interrogates the ontological and anthropological foundations upon which rights are granted, revealing how efforts to extend rights beyond the human often reproduce rather than displace anthropocentrism. What appears to be a progressive project of ‘decentring’ the human frequently results in a subtle form of ‘recentring’, as non-human beings—animals, rivers or machines—are recognized as rights-bearing subjects only insofar as they resemble humans. In this way, the human continues to serve as the moral and legal benchmark for determining worth, assimilating and flattening non-humans’ into familiar conceptual frameworks. Situating non-human rights within broader philosophical, economic, scientific and technological contexts, the chapter exposes a pervasive metaphysical drive to overcome otherness and reaffirm a disembodied, abstract conception of the human as the ultimate standard of value, agency and existence.
Source: Routledge eBooks
Author: Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa
Institution: Queen Mary University of London
Language: English
Topic: Animal Law and Welfare
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7160244697