"Not personhood... beingness" - Professor Maneesha Deckha‪‬ - Sentientism 209

Maneesha Deckha is a law professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Her work initially spanned human rights, injustice, feminist theory, post-colonial & decolonial theory and later, inter-species justice and its links and intersectionality with human social justice. Maneesha founded and directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University. She is the author of the book “Animals as Legal Beings”.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"

Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

00:00 Clips!

00:55 Welcome

- Maneesha on The Animal Turn and Think Like a Vegan podcasts hosted by:

- Claudia Hirtenfelder Sentientism episode - Emilia Leese Sentientism episode - SentientistEducation

03:05 Maneesha's Intro

- "To consider how different oppressions for different groups, both human and animal and even other non-humans, are systemically structured and are related and overlap - and also how they might be different"

- Working long before and since the "Animal Turn" in academia "when not too many people were discussing animals"

- Research: animals legal subjectivity, animal ethics, feminist perspectives "connecting work... looking at issues of gender, race, culture, species in tandem"

- "Addressing questions that affect women, that affect children, that affect animals - through that intersectional lens"

- Starting and Directing the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University

- Public facing projects e.g. the "A Deeper Kindness" documentary

06:55 What's Real?

- Growing up in a Hindu household... celebrations, stories

- The radical diversity of Hinduism "all these gods and goddesses and quite a few of them are multi-species... Lord Ganesh"

- University courses on Hinduism and Buddhism

- "I always looked at that... as myth"

- The ethos of learning... being introduced to modernist, scientific & secular views

- "I approached the world in a more secular, atheist frame... atheist understood as being compatible with Hinduism... not really believing in these gods and goddesses but somewhat happy that these stories are there... the diversity of thought that it brings up"

- "When we have a physical sensation or emotional sensation that it's real... that pain is real... that suffering is real even if it's psychological"

- Learning about social construction and the influence of language at university "we cannot access... reality... without mediating that access through concepts, through language"

- "We can't really know something 100% for certain... because it depends on how we frame it on the interiority of our mind which of course almost always depends on language"

26:30 What Matters?

37:25 Who Matters?

01:07:47 A Better World?

01:15:50 Follow Maneesha

- “I’m of that age where I’m not too excited about social media”

- Maneesha at the University of Victoria

- A Deeper Kindness documentary series

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