Lecture by Corine Pelluchon

All too often the human relationship with animals is marked by the violence of a regime of exploitation and domination. The suffering we inflict on animals which are converted into mere objects by industrial production, experimentation and entertainment is, in the opinion of the philosopher Corine Pelluchon, symptomatic of a system that is not truly in the service of life and which gives priority to profits over the happiness and wellbeing of species, including humans. This is why condemnation of ill-treatment of animals is part of a vast movement which questions a socioeconomic model based on the instrumentalisation of animals and the environment, a system which, in the last instance, leads to the degradation of human beings. For Corine Pelluchon, this violence goes beyond the bounds of morality and becomes a matter of justice. She believes that if we are to put an end to this, a new global political theory is urgently needed, one that is based on a new conception of the subject which will include animals in its moral considerations, and that will heed their needs and interests in the definition of the common good. This would be the necessary condition for planning a zoopolitics in a system characterised by respect for democratic pluralism.