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From Animal Languages to Interspecies Worlds

This chapter investigates how we can conceptualize language games between animals of different species, specifically focusing on human/non-human animal relations, and the author explores the role that language plays in constructing common worlds with other animals. The author first reflects on the relationship between language and world, using dog trainer and philosopher Vicki Hearne’s views about interspecies language games, and Heidegger’s views on the relation between world and language. She then turns to the embodied aspects of language, drawing on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The following section focuses on understanding other animals and the role of empathy in this process. The second part of the chapter investigates how this works in practice. The author first conceptualizes ethologist Barbara Smuts’s experience of living with baboons as world-building practice. The chapter then turns to living and speaking with dogs, discussing language, habits, and building common worlds. Next, the author considers sharing households with other animals, and the role that material interventions can play in working towards understanding and improving conditions for other animals, including increasing their freedom. In the final section, the author further explores the relation between these different examples of interspecies world-building practices and freedom.