Ideology and Social Cognition: The Challenge of Theorizing ‘Speciesism’

In this essay I explore whether Sally Haslanger’s model of ideology can handle ‘speciesism’ (assuming, for the sake of argument, that some version of the animal rights position is correct). The first section emphasizes how dramatically our conceptions of social justice and injustice would have to change even if only the ‘reformist’ view (we can use nonhuman animals for our purposes but must treat them humanely) is right, let alone the ‘revolutionary’ view (we cannot use nonhuman animals at all). The failure to discuss speciesism in standard accounts of ‘ideology’ would then itself be revealed to be deeply ideological. The second section examines how some of the key concepts Haslanger uses—mindshaping, hybridity, hidden transcripts—would have to be modified for an ideology of this kind. Finally, in the third section, I consider what possibilities there might be for liberatory change, especially given that (unlike the case for subordinated human groups) nonhuman animal group interests cannot be mobilized for revolutionary transformation