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S1E8: Autonomy with Frédéric Côté-Boudreau

Claudia talks to Frédéric Côté-Boudreau about autonomy and how it relates to animals. They highlight some of the tensions with considering animals as beings who might want to make their own choices and touch on what this could mean for the law and the ways in which our societies are structured.

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Recorded: 11 June 2020

Frédéric Côté-Boudreau is a philosophy scholar who earned his PhD at Queen's University in 2019 with a thesis entitled Inclusive Autonomy: A Theory of Freedom for Everyone. He is based in Montréal, Canada, and regularly gives talks on speciesism, veganism, the citizenship approach to animal rights, disability rights, and the convergence between social justice and animal justice. He also co-founded the Québec's Estivales de la question animale, a summer camp where academics and activists meet to discuss issues and strategies related to animal liberation. Find out more about him here.

Mentioned: 

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"Just as our solution is ours, their solution has to be theirs. This recognition places at the core of the
problem of animal rights a specific “speaking for the other” problem. What is called “animal law” has been human law: the laws of humans on or for or about animals. These are laws about humans’ relations to animals. Who asked the animals? References to what animals might have to say are few and far between. Do animals dissent from human hegemony? I think they often do. They vote with their feet by running away. They bite back, scream in alarm, withhold affection, approach warily, fly and swim off" - Catharine MacKinnon, Of Mice and Men.

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo. This episode was edited and produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder.

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