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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the New Books Network Animal Studies Channel. My name is Kyle Johansen and I'm a host on this channel. Today I'm very happy to be interviewing Dr. Ava Meyer. Ava is a philosopher, visual artist, writer and singer, songwriter. Today we'll be discussing their book, Multi Species Assemblies, which was published in 2025 by Vine Press. Welcome to the podcast, Ava.
- [01:29]
C
Thank you.
- [01:31]
B
Yeah, thanks for joining us. Before we get into talking about your book, I was hoping that you'd just tell us a bit about yourself, like where you're from, what sort of work you do, or just anything else that you think listeners might want to know about you.
- [01:41]
C
At the moment, I am in Landsmere where I live together with Doris, who's here in the living room with me. She's a Romanian ex street dog, and Mias, who's a cat person, currently washing his tail because he was outside all day and now came in. I'm a writer. I write novels and poetry. I'm also a philosopher, academic philosopher, affiliated with the University of Amsterdam. I'm a member of a multi species art collective, so I have a background in visual arts. And together with Geze Heemskerk, who's a human being and some dogs, including Doris, we form the multispecies art collective. And we create art for non human audiences and also collaborate with non humans locally on projects. And yeah, today we're here to speak about multispecies assemblies, which is really a book about non human animals and also other more than human beings and politics, which are some of the key themes in my work.
- [02:46]
B
Okay, thanks. Yeah. But often before chatting about the book, I like to try and figure out some things that are, I think particularly interesting about the author and I'll ask them about it. You have a bunch of stuff that's interesting about you. So it was a little hard to decide What I wanted to ask you about. The thing I wrote down for myself was that you've written 20 books at this point and your books have been translated into over 20 languages. That just seems really impressive. One of the things I wanted to ask was just a given you've written all these books and that they're so well received. I mean, maybe you have a particular book that you've written that you might want to suggest to to the listeners other than the book we're about to cover. But also this multi species art collective thing is really cool. Making art for non humans. That's a fascinating kind of project to be engaged in. We do want to speak to either of these sorts of things. Maybe a favorite book of yours that you've written that you want to recommend to people. And also if you feel like expanding on this art collective stuff, I'd be interested to hear about it.
- [03:34]
C
I always, in terms of my own books, I always like the last one or the book that I'm working on right now the most because books are finished, I'm not so interested in them anymore. So for those who are capable of reading Dutch, there's a new novel coming out early next year in which words begin to disappear from the language. And this causes a lot of problems and changes in the Netherlands. And it's a kind of metaphor for the political situation, situation over here right now. It's a very funny book, or at least I find it funny. I don't know if others will find it funny as well, but for those who are not capable of reading Dutch, there's a novel of mine called See now, which is just coming out in English translation in the UK and the us. I think that those who know me from my philosophical work might be interested in reading this book and about the multispecies art collective. It's a really wonderful project to be working on because we have. It's a research project in the sense that we investigate what art is and can be in a multispecies context, because humans are obviously not the only beings who create art. Think, for example, of dance and music and performance and installation. Think of nests and burrows and dances that non human animals do. So we're really looking at the work that other animals are making and also other more than human creatures like plants. And at the same time, we also also want to make other humans aware of the fact that we share the world with so many different beings who create meaning on their own terms. And we want to foster political awareness. We also do projects with the collective in art contexts where we will either show work that's made by non human animals or in collaboration with us. And recently we thought a lot about giving back, because in art history, as in all histories in the world, humans have mostly taken from other animals. And there's a lot of art being made at the moment focusing on the agency of non human animals and, I don't know, multispecies things. Multispecies is one of the buzzwords going around right now. And while on the one hand this can show us a lot about the types of agency that other animals have or use, and also their social lives, their subjectivity, it can also be problematic, for example, when humans still exploit these animals or still use hierarchical views, either in the background or maybe even the foreground, about humans and other animals with regard to art or society more generally. Yeah, we try to give back, for example, with helping city pigeons and creating work about and for them through giving string food workshops. But we've also created a fountain for. For insects and birds in collaboration with them. So yeah, these kinds of projects.
- [06:46]
B
Okay, no, that's really neat. So yeah, work that's to some extent by animals because animals are involved in the creation of a lot of it, but also for animals because they'll be able to make use of it or consume it also, I guess for animals in the sense that it promotes their interests in some cases or advances their. I don't know. Yeah, advances their interests, is that right?
- [07:06]
C
Yes.
- [07:06]
B
Yeah. Okay, neat. So we should talk about the book. We're supposed to talk about multi species assemblies. Why did you decide to write this book?
- [07:14]
C
I've written my PhD thesis about political animal voices, so I've been working a lot. I thought a lot about language, non human animal languages, but also the question what language is, especially when you rethink it in the context in which other animals are also seen as capable of using language. And I thought a lot about politics, political animal agency, but also justice, power relations, and the intersection of these two concepts. So how do power relations shape our understanding of language? How do inequalities in society determine the political position of non human animals and the way in which they are listened to? So their political voice, how does what we view as proper language in the human case reflects power relations and so on. So one of the things I've become very careful about is defining as humans how other animals should live, or what they are capable of, or what their idea of the good life is. Because both in the history of Western philosophy, but also in fields like biology and ethology is that humans very often use stereotypical views of non human animals to make normative claims, and that humans very often really don't know what other animals want because we're not used to asking them. It's very often just not part of our discourse. And many scholars have been writing about this. For example, Vinciane Desprez wrote a book called what Would Animals say if We Ask the Right Questions? In which he traces how ideas about non human animals reflect the opinions of the researchers who studied them, and how the scope for meaningful interaction has always been limited by ideas that preconceived ideas that humans had about other animals. But there's also, in the field of belief, political animal philosophy, a lot of attention for how power relations shape political animal agency and also our human views about that. So I've mostly sad when humans would ask me, for example, after giving a talk, yeah, but how are we going to establish these new democracies and societies with other animals? My answer used to be, we have to try this out. We have to ask the other animals, because we really don't know. And I don't want to perpetuate this idea of humans always knowing best, but I did that for a couple of years and then I thought we do need to start somewhere. So maybe I can say something about where we can start. Because the project of doing politics with other animals, or actually doing politics in more just and caring ways with other animals, because of course, we are already entangled in many political relationships. This project, we need to begin somewhere. As humans, one of the challenges is that we have very little knowledge about what other animals want from us, what kind of relationships they want with us. When we think about building new political relationships and societies, this is as much about how to create knowledge together, how to learn from each other, but also with each other as it is about actually governing societies. Because, yeah, we don't really have blueprints for that. This is an important ingredient in thinking about where to start. Politics is for many animals and also including many human beings, a local affair. Something that really is really very much about your daily life when you think about doing politics with other animals. Many forms of bureaucracy just don't enter the picture because animals are not interested in it, maybe also not capable of it. And interestingly, of course, many humans are also not capable of certain forms of political engagement, even though we presuppose they are. But yeah, so I thought about local forms of politics and for a longer time I've been thinking about the model of the assembly and which is a local form of politics. It's a form of direct democracy. And I began to investigate how existing ideas about assemblies can be extended to include not only the interests of non human animals and other beings, but also their participation. And then, and this is how I came to the idea of multi species assemblies and I wrote a little book about it. And the idea is really that we should now try out how to actually create these assemblies in practice and then refine the model through dialogue with non human animals.
- [12:44]
B
Okay. Yeah, yeah. And one thing that came out in the book was that this book was really meant to be a starting point for how multi species assemblies should be understood and how they would operate. You're providing the concept and giving a some ideas about where to start. But the idea is, a big part of the thought here is that we need to actually experiment with multi species assemblies in order to figure out exactly how they should be set up and how they should operate, I think. Is that right?
- [13:07]
C
Yes, that's right. And you used the word experiment and I also used that, and I remember now that Patrice Jones, who read the book and commented on the first draft. Yeah. Pointed to the problems with that word because of course we humans use other animals in experimentation and also for our own purposes. But still I think that of course, given the problems with experimentation, acknowledging these problems, I still think we do need experiments. But then, yeah, on the basis of consent and co learning and thanks for the agency and flourishing of the other beings.
- [13:42]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. I'll move on to my next sort of official question in a moment. But one thing that was striking about your book and that I found, I guess interesting and attractive about it, was that you published your book with Vine Press. And so Vine Press is a press that some listeners might be familiar with, but I think maybe a lot are not familiar with because it's a small indie press, one that is, I guess, owned and operated by Vine Sanctuary. And so the choice of press was interesting. But it's interesting for anyone who knows about Vine Vine Sanctuary and who also reads your book, it'll be clear maybe why you decided to publish with Vine Press. Because the, the project that you're doing in this book idea, ideas about how to include non humans in politics, that's very much, I think, to some extent, Vine Sanctuaries project. Are you interested in talking about this at all, about your decision to publish with Vine Press and about the relationship between Vine Sanctuary and what you're doing in your book?
- [14:34]
C
Yes, it's great that you mentioned that. And that's also why I thought about asking Vine Press if they would be interested in publishing this book. Because I think that what is very important to realize is that when humans think about doing politics with other animals and forming co government, multi species co government, they always think that it's some kind of farm far away utopia. It's the discourse about AI decoding animal language. Like we are in some sort of human realm and the other animals are in their own realm. And yeah, you can only listen to them in fairy tales. But of course this is untrue. And language is a lot more than only human words. There are many kinds of embodied interactions, habits that we can form with other animals, lots of practices in which we engage in processes of meaning making and sense making that really transgresses this sort of human idea of humans as isolated. And so it's good to recognize that multi species politics already exists. There's of course a lot of violence, there's resistance on the side of non human animals. There's also collaboration and cooperation sometimes and in some instances scholars and activists and other humans are already actively investigating how to form better communities with other animals in microsanctuaries, but also in larger sanctuaries like vine and Vine. Explicitly, the sanctuary explicitly understands itself as a multispecies community in which the humans are not automatically the leaders or automatically those who know best, but where there's a lot of understanding of ways in which other animals communicate with each other, choose roles for themselves and jobs, shape the routines and the social constellation of the society and all kinds of other, and engage in all kinds of other practices to form the society and shape the society. Yes, this kind of society was in the back of my mind when I was thinking about multispecies assemblies. And I think that it's a really good example of a place in which these ideas are tested out. But I also think that this model of multi species assembly can be understood in a more in a way that's not so specifically tied to a community where everybody lives for a very long time. A non ideal, or of course not totally ideal, but in quite good circumstances. I think that assemblies can also take place in other settings and in other social and cultural constellations. But I was very pleased that FinePress wanted to publish the book. I really like the tradition of anarchist publishing in which, yeah, scholars write manifestos and short texts that disrupt the status quo and that are really accessible in terms of pricing, but also text for a general audience, just in order to foster the dialogue about certain topics. So, yeah, I'm really pleased that this worked out okay.
- [17:47]
B
Yeah. So what you've said, said about multi species politics already being something that happens. It's not just some ideal, it's something that's already really happening. Maybe that thought leads nicely into my next question, which is that you begin your book by describing your relationship with your garden. I was hoping that you would tell us a bit about this relationship and what it illustrates for me.
- [18:09]
C
When I moved to this house where I'm living now, the garden was completely empty when I moved in. And I came to this, not really with an idea that I wanted to create a very beautiful English garden or something, but I was thinking, yeah, maybe I should plant native trees and plants and maybe I should in some sense govern this space, because it seemed very empty. But in the years that followed, I did do some planting, especially for bees and other insects that are experiencing difficulties in the Netherlands. We have the largest loss of biodiversity diversity in the European Union. And Dutch people really like pesticides and monoculture. I wanted to do something against that. But then the garden also began to come to life. So lots of plants, lots of roots were still in the earth and plants grew there, many kinds of grass, many trees. So right now there are quite a lot of quite tall trees in the garden that not all of the neighbors are as happy with as I am. And then of course, all the other beings who live here also came. Many insects. This is a very watery town, so there are also a lot of amphibians living here, frogs and toads and salamanders, birds. I live quite close to a nature reserve and many of the birds also visit the gardens over here. And to me it feels as if this garden is. I'm not really part of the community of people who live in the garden, so I go out there sometimes. There's now a hedgehog living here who found a partner over the summer. I'm not sure if they're still together, but I feed the hedgehog in the evening and the guinea pigs, who also share this house with me, go outside in the summer. So, yeah, we use parts of the garden and I need to cut the hedge and all of these things to keep the neighbors happy. But apart from that, it's really its own entity. And I find it quite odd and problematic that as a human, I should take decisions cutting down trees or doing other things without consulting those who actually use the garden and who actually depend on it, or live there, or sometimes visit for eating. I've been thinking about how to make this more democratic, to incorporate their perspectives in decision making. And I know that a lot of my colleagues in animal philosophy, but also activists, are probably familiar with this kind of exercise in taking the perspective of others. But it would of course be even better if there would be a way to make democratic decisions about this garden. So these ruminations about the garden got me thinking about how to set up these kind of local councils for democratic decision making. And then it becomes clear that different beings have different ways in which they can participate democratically. For example, when you think about the political participation of cows or dogs or birds, it's not that hard to see how they can express themselves. And it's not that hard to develop forms of deliberation in which we can speak about our preferences, revise our ideas, give arguments, listen to reasons by others, and so on. Maybe I can discuss this in more detail later, if we have time for it, because I know that it's a contested claim, but at least for me, that's fairly straightforward. But then, of course, there are also other beings who might have interests or even might be capable forms of deliberation in the garden, like the trees and the plants and the fungi and the other others. Then there's also the idea of the garden as a whole, and this is not just something that applies to the garden, but for example, when you think about seas or forests or mountains, this kind of natural entities also have ways of flourishing and create the conditions under which all others can flourish. But I think that when you approach these different kinds of entities, they ask for understanding differences in agency, differences in voice, and differences in how you speak about interests. And because a lot of my work has focused on language and agency and these kinds of topics, I find this super interesting. And I think that also the animal scholars that I know tend to draw a sharp line, for example, between non human animals and plants. But I think that with our conceptual tools, we actually have a lot to say about how we should engage with plants. In any case, the garden was one of the things that got me thinking about assemblies and democratic decision making and the value of taking into account different agents. So not conceptualizing justice for non human animals or animals, including human animals, but also thinking about these other agents. And I think that when it comes to plants and fungi, there's a lot of research asking us to carefully think through these normative questions. This is also what I meant earlier when I was speaking about Vine. So you have these really already existing multi species communities in which there's a lot of deliberation and understanding. But I think that assemblies could also make sense in the context, for example, of a garden where there are many different beings with their own perspective on their garden, their own interests and their own. Yeah, rights and duties, for lack of a better word.
- [24:25]
D
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- [24:57]
B
Yeah, you have a very capacious understanding of which beings or entities should be included in assemblies. And you've said a bit about that just now and I'll give you the opportunity to expand on that later if you want to. We've also just we've been talking about the idea of assemblies quite a lot, but maybe it is worth just explicitly talking about that concept a little bit. So it is, I guess, the central concept in your book, the idea of an assembly. So it maybe would be helpful to say exactly what you think an assembly is. And also, do you distinguish between in the book, between different kinds of assembly? So what different kinds of assembly are there? And if you want to say a bit about why you think think they're a useful political idea, because they're not just talking vaguely about including non humans in politics. You think that this is a very good way to include non humans in politics, that assemblies are a particularly useful mechanism or means of inclusion. Yeah, something you would say a bit about this sort of, this stuff. What is an assembly? What are the different kinds of assembly? And why do you think assemblies are so politically useful?
- [25:54]
C
What you see now in many countries around the world is that it's not going very well with representative democracies. I think that they're not very democratic, even. Even though I do not wish to deny the freedoms that I have living in the country where I live. But there are several problems. For example, in the context of the Netherlands, where I am based, there's a huge influence of companies on political decision making. There's also a big distance between politics and citizens. So a lot of Dutch citizens, few voting as the most important political act and express a lot of dissatisfaction with how it's going politically. And this is leading to a lack of engagement with others and a lot of space for populist and right wing politicians, propaganda and so on. And all of these problems have to do do with the way in which our democracies are organized. So I think that when we are thinking about the problems with democracy, it's not enough to simply say we need to discuss other topics, this needs to happen, that needs to happen, and so on. I think we also really need to consider this structure. And one of the solutions that has been named in the past years is that we need citizens. Citizens assemblies are a very specific form of assembly in which different citizens are selected in a process. So they're selected by lottery, but they're meant to be a representative, they're meant to be a good representation of the citizens in the country or in a certain area. These members of the assembly are educated, there are processes of deliberation in which they speak with one another and ultimately, ultimately they decide. This model has been used a lot in decision making about the climate and it's proven to be to lead to a very different result than when politicians would decide upon the same questions. Because the advantage is politicians are often tied to four year election cycles, so they can't really think about the future. They're also tied to interests of their voters. So their very strict in their position and often not very open to good arguments or change. And this just works completely different in the case of citizens assemblies, where humans are really asked to deliberate with each other, consider different standpoints, revise their opinion, listen to others and so on. So in the literature about citizens assemblies, there's a lot of faith in this model being able to remedy some of the problems that representative democracies are facing at the moment, specifically in relation to the climate crisis and other ecological crises. But this is not the only model of assembly that exists. The model of the assembly is very old. The ancient Greeks already used assemblies for their decision making. And there are also many non western communities, indigenous communities and other communities that use used assemblies or still use assemblies to come to Decisions about the community who is part of these assemblies is also different in different contexts. Very often it's only adult humans, but for example, with the Zapatistas, a liberation movement based in Mexico, it's children from 12 years of age onwards. So. So yeah, this model has been used by many different communities worldwide in the very basis just the idea is that you come together with a group to discuss questions of common importance, sometimes bindingly, as really as the government of the community, but sometimes as with the climate assemblies, in a more advisory way.
- [30:32]
B
Way. Okay, thanks. So you've already said a bit about this, but if you want to say some more, one of the main conclusions your book argues for is that assemblies should include more than just humans. And I was hoping that you would explain who should be included in assemblies as well as why you think that they should be included.
- [30:49]
C
In the political animal philosophy literature, there's been a lot of discussion about the question of whether humans should represent other animals and speak for them in political contexts, or whether they should have a right to speak for themselves. And I think the latter position, which is also my position, makes most sense. Like I said before, our views of non human animals have been shaped by centuries of oppression and in some instances their views about themselves as well. But what in places like vine and similar spaces where agency is fostered, and what you can also see is if you pay attention to the non humans in your own life, is that they often really clearly know what they want and are also capable of telling us what they want. And this has normative value. The idea that non human animals are not objects to think about, but subjects to think with and to speak with matters normatively. And it also matters democratically, because humans are really making a mess of politics at the moment and also of the planet Earth. And when I say humans, I of course mean a specific type of Western human that's very powerful. Now, not all humans, because there are also human communities who live on very different terms. But my point is that non human animals also form communities, have ideas about how to live on this planet, are capable of expressing these, discuss these with us sometimes, and yeah, this matters politically and we should take it more seriously when we think about assemblies. It's not enough to simply speak about the other animals and determine what is good for them. No, they have a first person perspective on their life and on our lives together. And they should be able to phrase that and be listened to. And I also think that there is scope for learning to learn to understand each other better, to understand ourselves better. Also, perhaps, and to create new practices. But of course, humans and other animals are not separated from the rest of the living beings. We are part of larger networks in which different beings like plants, fungi and others also act. And I recently, earlier this week, I organized a workshop together with, yes, Kram and Lucia Neko about more than human deliberation. And we discussed deliberation with non human animals, but also with plants, because there's a lot of literature about communicative capacities in plants, plant cognition and similar concepts. These are all also very contested. But I think that it's clear that we as humans are not the only beings who act. And this is also an idea that's of course quite prominent in many indigenous mythologies and cosmologies. It's also present in Daoism, for example. So it's not new and it's something that we should reckon with. However, I do think that in these different in relationships with non animal beings, first of all, it's less straightforward how we should conceptualize deliberation or speaking with or even language. I haven't thought about this enough. I need to think about it more. Especially when we are thinking about natural entities, these concepts might not apply or take on a different form. There are also human groups that are not often considered as political agents or folks with political voices that should be listened to, like human children. So in my idea of assembly, I also pay attention to young humans, and they often have political agency ways in which they can express themselves, think about the societies that we form and should be taken seriously. But then there is also the question of future generations. And of course, while their interests might matter, it's not possible of deliberating with them in the way in which we can deliberate with human children. When we think about multispecies assemblies, there will be different forms of participation and deliberation connected to abilities of different beings who participate, shared histories, and therefore forms of understanding. I think the concept representation also needs to be further developed because humans use this sometimes quite casually, like we already know how we should represent others, but in many cases we don't clearly know that. So yes, both participation, deliberation and also representation are important concepts in the context of assemblies that mean something different in relation to disposal, different groups, and that all should be further developed.
- [36:13]
B
Okay, and I think, I don't think you mentioned this one. I guess another being or entity or not everyone would want to use that sort of language. But you think that environmental entities should be included as well. So I guess ecosystems, forests, that sort of thing, collectives, right?
- [36:29]
C
Yes, collectives. And also as the. Yeah, background is not the right word. But also as the holders or the. The locust. The place other where we deliberate. And that makes it possible for us to deliberate. So in recent years there has been a lot of attention for rites of nature and rights of nature basically focuses on these kinds of natural entities like rivers and forests. There's a beautiful project in Iceland in which a group of artists and scholars has entered the presidential elections with a glacier. Glacier did not become precedent. But yeah, that's also an example of focusing on natural entities as political entities. And I think that when it comes to representing these entities, quite different questions are at stake than when you are representing non human animals. But it matters to include them in the assembly because they are. Are. Yeah, they are what? Or according to indigenous. Many indigenous communities who hold us and also foster life.
- [37:50]
B
Okay. You identify an objection to multi species assemblies that you call species skepticism and you argue that this objection is mistaken. I was hoping you would explain the objection and your reply to it. And I was also hoping you would explain whether your response to the objection applies equally in all cases. Cases. So for example, whether you think species skepticism is just as mistaken when applied to plants and environmental entities as it is when applied to animals. I suppose with respect to environmental entities, the objection would have to have a different word than species. Maybe just like non human stuff, skepticism or something like that. But. So yeah, I'll leave it to you.
- [38:28]
C
Yeah, I think that many humans think that we can understand other humans but not other animals. And so they have some kind of every everyday understanding of humans. This is very often tied to speaking in human language as well. But then when you speak to them about non human animals, they can say things like you never really know what goes on in their heads. And you see this a lot in philosophy as well. I think that humans are obsessed with species, that they are too obsessed with it. That it's a human categorization that is very prominent in human minds and human discourses. But for other animals it's not that relevant or mostly focusing on other things, I presume. So I thought about this strange mechanism because of course we also. Human language deceives us and there are many other ways in which we understand humans than only through language. And the same applies to other animals. I think it's a view that really obscures moving to better relations together with other animals. So this term really refers to humans who discriminate on the basis of species. Connect this to human language and. Yeah, a form of skepticism towards knowing other animals that they don't have towards knowing other human beings. So this idea really came about in relation to non human animals. It's a good question if this also applies to plants and to natural entities. I think that in relation to plants. So when humans began to argue for the inclusion of other animals in the moral community, of political community, they often referred to capacities and sameness. So other animals have this or that capacity for sentience or other things, and therefore we should include them in this or that sphere. But in the end, this line of reasoning only gets you so far, because if you keep comparing the other animals to humanity, humans, the humans will remain unique and also the blueprint for the comparison. And it's also in the end it's really about seeing these other beings differently, seeing them as beings worthy of concern. So this kind of gestalt speech is I think, very important for the animal movement. And I think that in part we can do this through argumentation and rational thought. But very often humans also learn to see other animals differently on the basis of interactions with them or through other heart. So I think that knowing what kind of beings they are is not always connected to knowing more about their capacities. And recently I've been thinking about this figure of the gestalt witch in relation to plants as well. I had a very clear moment of this myself when I was on the Isle of Mull in Scotland earlier this year and I saw seaweed washed up on the shore holding stones. And I was there with my friend, artist and poet Mick Vanborn, and she told me that seaweed always holds a stone to anchor the seaweeds do this to anchor themselves on the floor of the sea. And I suddenly thought, but this is a form of tool use. They are using the stones as tools to anchor themselves. And then when I had seen this with the seaweed, I suddenly saw it everywhere because the is is a very rocky place, so there are lots of stones and rocks. And the plants are constantly using the stones everywhere to grow in certain ways and to conquer the wind, because there's a lot of wind on the island. So this was one thing that happened that made me see plants differently. I was also ill for a long time. I had long Covid for two years. And this brought me into a different time. And during this time I learned a lot from the plants in my windowsill and also the trees in the garden about how to endure time and how to be in one place for a long time. And what I'm trying to say with that is that there are different Ways of seeing the different beings with whom we share the planet. And sometimes our experiences and insights can make us see them differently. So while I don't know if species skepticism is such a useful term in relation to plants, I have to think about that. I do think that the relying impulse for. Yeah. For thinking about it in these terms will also apply to plants because we see them as fundamentally different, perhaps for good reasons. I'm going to be a little skepticist about that right now because I need to make up my mind about it more clearly. I think that some. For me, it's clear that plants act and that they communicate and that they have all kinds of other capacities. But I need to think about it in a bit more detail. And when it comes to natural entities, I think we need a different set of concepts to express our relationships to them. And also. Yeah, how to. I do think we need to learn to honor them differently as humans. So I think that's. But this is more something on the side of humans. I don't think that there's. You can speak about intersubjectivity in the way we do when we speak about intersubjectivity with animals, for example.
- [44:07]
B
Okay, thanks. Limu Emu.
- [44:10]
A
And Doug, here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat helping. Helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [44:26]
B
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [44:28]
A
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [44:30]
B
Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates excludes Massachusetts. Yeah, I'm. This was one area of the book where I was trying to just. Just sort out what your views are or what they might be and also trying to sort out the idea of species skepticism. One thing that occurred to me is that we could maybe distinguish between two kinds of species skepticism if we want to just keep using that term. One is the kind that I think you're really mostly talking about in the book, which is skepticism about the possibility of knowing the minds of other animals. So that sort of skepticism, I think assumes that animals do have minds, but that they're so different from us that we just can't know what the contents of their minds are. And if it were. If that were true, if it were true, that we can. We can't know what animals minds are like, what their preferences are or what have you, then that would. Yeah, that would be. It'd be difficult to include them in politics because we need to Be able to know what animals want in order to properly include them. We need to be able to communicate. But another kind of species skepticism that we might distinguish is skepticism about whether a being has a mind at all. And it used to be the case that people were skeptical about whether animals have minds, but that Descartes thought they didn't have minds. And for a long time psychologists thought that animals don't have minds, behaviorism kind of stuff. But those views are discredited now. I don't think anyone really believes that stuff anymore, which is good. That's a form of progress. But skepticism about whether plants have minds at all is still popular. I think that's the convention, the conventional sort of view. And I think most people would say that environmental entities don't have minds either. I think that as far as I can tell, your view, because your views are a bit different from what sort of mainstream. I think, sort of, if I were to say what is the mainstream animal ethics or animal studies view, that I think the mainstream animal studies view would be something. Something like animals have minds. And contrary to what some people think, contrary to what a lot of people think, we can know their minds quite well if we just try hard enough and practice and stuff like that. So most and most animal study scholars would agree with you that the first kind of species skepticism about whether we can know the minds of animals is unwarranted. There are maybe some practical difficulties we have to sort out, but we can sort that out if we just really put in the time and effort and whatnot. But most animal study scholars would maintain the other kind of stuff, skepticism about environmental entities and about plants. They'd say environmental entities don't have minds, plants don't have minds. I think your view is something like plants might have minds, that it's hasty to conclude that they don't have minds, given the fact that they seem to possess agency. So I think in your book it might be the case that agency and having a mind come apart, that a being can have agent, can act or have agency, and yet not have a mind. I think maybe you think these ideas. Ideas come apart. And so you'd say that plants have agency but might not have a mind, and that we should maybe just wait to figure out whether they have minds and not draw conclusions too hastily. And I think your view about environmental entities maybe is that they do have agency, but almost certainly don't have minds or something like that. Am I right? Am I right about this? I was. Have I pieced together your views accurately?
- [47:28]
C
My mind Might be the wrong word. Also, now that I'm listening to you, because I agree with you that I do think that the plants have agency. And I also think that what's very interesting about what's going on right now in plant studies is that humans often think that it's a discussion about capacities, but it's as much a discussion about the meaning of concepts. So what we see right now in plant studies is that there's just a lot of dispute between different biologists and other plant scientists between how do we interpret certain acts, capacities for learning, preferences, all of these things that are being studied in plants. How do we interpret it and how do we call it? And I think that mind is even in the case of non human animals, sometimes problematic. Think of octopuses who think with their arms and others. So mind might not be appropriate. Forms of cognition could very well be appropriate, the way I understand the literature right now. But also. No, let's leave it at that. The way I understand the literature and other concepts. But I'm very enthusiastic about the discussion that's taking place now in plant studies also because it's an interesting philosophical discussion about the meaning of concepts. And I think it's our job to rethink concepts in the light of new insights about different beings. And when it comes to natural entities, I think that what matters is that they possess a different kind of agency than non human animals do. Animals have intentions, including humans and plants may have intentions, but natural entities don't have intentions in that sense, but they will bring about certain events. But I think it's for me also a bit of an open discussion in which terms we speak about. I think that in a sense, what I really like about language is that I think that in a sense we're having this discussion the wrong way around. What I like about language is that we have concepts and that these concepts can show us something about the world around us. And also words sometimes, and sentences. I don't know, maybe it's easier to express the agency of the sea in a poem than it is in a philosopher article. Maybe that makes more sense. What I like about human language and human words is that they can show us the world differently. And I'm really interested in taking concepts and seeing how they work in certain relationships. And this was nice about the workshop about deliberation because it's a concept that's usually reserved for humans. Some humans have been speaking about it in relation to other animals, but not really anybody in relation to plants. What does that mean? Can we still speak about Deliberation, what would it entail? What kind of agency does it presuppose? And I really like this about political animal philosophy as well, because I think think that there's a whole new toolbox that came into our discourse with this political turn in animal ethics in which humans suddenly began to use words like citizenship or democracy or in this case assembly to think about relations with non human animals and other beings. Yeah. To return to your question, in part, it's about recognizing what kind of beings others are in order to build more just relationships with them, with each other. But there's also, I think, a poetic potential in discussing the politics with non human entities and trying to figure out what's going on in a more artistic or fluid or tangible sometimes way.
- [51:29]
B
Okay, thanks. So your book distinct between two types of inclusion, including someone by representing their interests in in an assembly versus including someone by giving them a voice or a say in an assembly. I was hoping that you would explain this distinction between types of inclusion. And I was also hoping that you would explain why one type of inclusion is sometimes more appropriate than the other.
- [51:53]
C
If what form of inclusion is more appropriate really depends on the being of question, being in question, their preferences or the community in question, their preferences, capabilities there and the possibilities for speaking for yourself or multispecies deliberation. But it's interesting also in light of what we just spoke about, to view this as a distinction between two forms of inclusion, because I'm now thinking that maybe this should be multiplied. Maybe there are many different forms of inclusion, inclusion that can matter. But I will leave that thought aside for a second and first answer your question. So this sort of comes back to the idea that non human animals can and should speak for themselves, like we discussed earlier, and that other beings might have interests, preferences, forms of agency that should normatively be taken into account. And I think that when we begin creating multispecies as assemblies, humans will have quite a lot of responsibility. So our world is currently quite human dominated. Humans determine the material conditions under which many non human animals live. As I mentioned earlier about the Netherlands, there's a lot of monoculture here that influences also plant species. And we've not really listened to what other beings want or how we can live side by side or even co shape societies. Humans need to make the first next step very often towards doing things differently. Somebody asked me recently if there are already assemblies existing without humans in the world. And I think that yes, there are many places in which other beings other than human animals, but perhaps also other beings, assembly and make decisions. But I think that the type of multispecies assemblies that I have in mind asks for human to set up the assembly to determine very locally whose voices should be heard, whose interests should be taken into account, in short, who will be affected by the question that the assembly will speak about. And this might be quite rough and quite heavily human focused in the beginning, but the idea is that the longer we do this, and also if we build stronger multispecies communities, communities and other animals will have more options for expressing themselves and there will be more attention and care for non animal beings, that the status quo will change. And that through having these assemblies and deliberating and entering processes with others, there will be a stronger sense of multispecies politics for all beings involved. And then the human dominance or human power should be able to decrease. And you see this, for example, in the wine sanctuary that we mentioned before, where the non human animals have a lot of power. And of course humans might still need to make decisions in certain circumstances. But yes, agency can be fostered, multispecies understanding can come into being and we can learn to do better together with other beings.
- [55:27]
B
Right, okay, yeah, I got the impression in the book that. So you certainly seem to think that the second type of inclusion, including someone by giving them a voice or a say, in an assembly, that's the ideal sort of inclusion. It'd be best if we could include all beings who have a voice or who have agency in that way. But you also are concerned with feasibility to some extent in the book, and you think that sometimes, at least right now, given our current state of knowledge and our current skit level, level of skill with respect to interpretation and whatnot. Right now it's not always feasible to include beings that way. So for example, you indicate that plants probably should be have their interest. They should have, they should be included by having their interests represented in assemblies. But it doesn't really make sense, at least right now, to try and give them a voice or a say in assemblies. And the thought wasn't that plants don't have a voice or what have you, it's rather that we can't understand their voice right now. And so if we wanted to include them in the better way by actually giving them a voice, we need to do some work to figure out what they're saying. So right now better to just represent their interest in assemblies and then eventually transition towards the better sort of inclusion, is that right? It's about. There's one kind of inclusion is better than the other, but the one that's less good is often. Is sometimes more feasible. So we kind of. We should include as much. We should engage in both kinds of inclusion where appropriate, but try to transition towards the better kind of inclusion over time. Is that right?
- [56:46]
C
Yes, that's right. For now. So it could be that assemblies are working. They might come to very different conclusions. And I like what you're saying about plants having a voice, but we don't really understand that right now. And I think that these are good thoughts to work with and to. Yeah. To base the first assemblies on.
- [57:07]
B
Okay, thanks. So conclude your book by discussing a number of goals which, though valuable in their own right, I think are also important because they help make it more feasible to create multi species assemblies. Assemblies in the future. I was hoping that you would explain some of these goals to us.
- [57:22]
C
One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is multispecies education. Because right now a lot of human education is focused on human society, on being able to participate in human society, fulfilling human goals, whatever they might be. And just our structures of education reinforce anthropocentrism and the idea that humans are better than us other animals. But what is that? Human children very often are not speciesist. There are also studies showing that children are not born speciesist, but made speciesist. And I think that's a very powerful given. And I also think that when you. I've done some philosophizing with human children about things like animal rights and climate change and all of that, and I think that they have great ideas about. About how the world can be made more fair. But then again, multispecies education, of course, does not only mean that human children should learn more about other animals and the larger natural world of which we are part. It also means that other than human beings, animals should have the right to be educated in multispecies societies when they are part of them. And so that we can learn about each other and with each other and not fall into the trap of binary thinking immediately when we start school. Multispecies education also includes unlearning, the unlearning of speciesism, similar to how folks are speaking about unlearning racism. These things should go hand in hand and all kinds of other practices can be part of that. For example, art, like the multispecies collective that we become, begin our conversation with. So I think that changing educational systems, thinking about co learning, starting from the idea that yes, we live in an ecological crisis, but we can at every point begin to live otherwise. Yeah, that's just. I think it's a really important aim for, for us at the moment. Other things that I discussed are for example, critical veganism. So our the ways humans eat and relate to other beings through what they eat. Because I think that this is one of the ways in which many humans participate in the exploitation of other animals. And eating differently can help. Yeah, it's just one of the basic ways in which we refigure our relationships with non human animals. And the critical in critical veganism refers to strengths of thinking about veganism, black veganism or indigenous veganism, in which veganism is not simply a lifestyle choice under capitalism as it is sometimes portrayed, but a practice in which we can enact the justice that we are fighting towards. And yeah, many of the other things that we can do in order to create better conditions for forming multispecies assemblies have to do with building stronger multi species communities. So like we discussed before, our cities and societies are now really created in ways to fit the humans and meant to exclude other animals in all kinds of material, symbolic, political, social ways and changing that in whatever form helps to move towards better conditions for speaking with others.
- [61:23]
B
Okay, thanks. Look, we've taken up a lot of your time. I'd like to thank you again for joining us to talk about your book Multispecies Assemblies, which was published in 2025 by BynPress. The only other question I have for you is whether you're currently working on any projects and if so, what are you working on.
- [61:39]
C
I'm always working on many different projects. One of the things, things that I'm thinking about at the moment in terms of philosophy is both viral illnesses and animal justice or multispecies justice. This also relates back to the long Covid that I was speaking to you about. And I've been thinking about plants as well. So I'm thinking about political plant agency at the moment. But apart from that, I'm also working on a book about what language actually is. And yeah, a book about time, but that's going to be in Dutch. And a collection of poetry about the space between life and death that's also in Dutch, but yeah, who knows, it might be translated.
- [62:28]
B
That's a lot of projects. And yeah, a lot of your work has been translated. I don't know much about the manner in which translation works. Is that something that's usually prompted by the publisher, if there's enough, if enough copies are sold or something like that?
- [62:39]
C
Yes, the publisher goes to these big book fairs and then they speak to all kinds of publishers, and then the other publishers think, oh, that's an interesting book. Maybe we can also print that for our people in our country.
- [62:52]
B
Okay, cool. Good luck with your projects, and thanks for joining us. It's been great talking to you.
- [62:56]
C
Thanks a lot for your questions and for reading the book and for our conversation here today.
- [63:07]
A
SA.