Vol. 6 No. 2 (2025): Political animals: animality, community, and the future body politic (continuous publication)
Special Dossier

The politics of sight and bearing witness to animal suffering: lessons from the sociology of human rights

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Annie Bernatchez
University of Ottawa
Bio
José Julián López
University of Ottawa
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Published 2025-10-28

Keywords

  • animal rights,
  • bearing witness,
  • critical substantivism,
  • human rights,
  • politics of sight

Copyright (c) 2025 Annie Bernatchez, José Julián López

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

BERNATCHEZ, Annie; LÓPEZ, José Julián. The politics of sight and bearing witness to animal suffering: lessons from the sociology of human rights. (Des)troços: revista de pensamento radical, Belo Horizonte, v. 6, n. 2, p. e60286, 2025. DOI: 10.53981/destrocos.v6i2.60286. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/revistadestrocos/article/view/60286. Acesso em: 7 dec. 2025.

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Abstract

Bearing witness is a strategy used by both Human and Animal rights activists. For Animal Justice Citizen Activists (AJCAs), bearing witness is linked to a politics of sight enacted through farm occupation. This article draws on previous analyses of the Canadian context: text media coverage of four farm occupations, two provincial ag-gag laws, and in-depth interviews with AJCAs. Using Kurasawa’s critical substantive approach, we conceptualize this politics of sight as a mode of ethico-political practice that draws attention to the tasks and perils of bearing witness. This approach, we argue, reveals challenges otherwise concealed by existing sociological frameworks.

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