The Limits of Our Language: A Conversation with Eva Meijer
Adam Sudewo: In “Animal Languages”, you argue that animals communicate in complex ways that challenge the human monopoly on language. How do we avoid the risk of anthropomorphizing their behavior when we interpret their communication?
Eva Meijer: Dear Adam, thank you for your interest in my work, and for these questions. When it comes to nonhuman animals and language, it first matters to recognize that there are many factors that determine how we speak, what we say, how (or if) we are heard, and who we can understand. Some are biological, like the species we belong to, or whether we use our voice to speak, scent or gestures. Other factors are social: the communities we are part of, the families we grow up in, class, gender, and so on determine our agency and voice. Individual characteristics also play a role. Activists or artists have other means of expressing themselves than those who prefer to stay quiet. When it comes to speaking with, understanding, and listening to nonhuman animals as humans, these factors also play a role (and there are many more). Our species characteristics determine what we hear: the songs of mice and the calls of bats largely fall outside of our hearing range. Social relations determine if there are shared life-world and common forms of creating meaning, like with domesticated animals. And individual relations that last over time, with nonhuman friends or neighbors, can lead to understanding. Misunderstanding is often part of learning to understand someone, also between humans.
In Western societies it is common to draw a line between human language and the expressions of other animals, but in fact there are many forms of (co-)creating meaning between beings of different species. Language does not take place in the mind, but it always embodied, and humans are always situated in a multispecies world. ‘We’ do not interpret what ‘they’ say from an outside, we are always already engaged in more-than-human relations. Like Merleau-Ponty writes: difference does not obstruct understanding. In fact, it is necessary for it. If we were all the same, we would not need to understand others. Species membership clearly matters, but other factors too, and humans are too species-obsessed at the moment (I have called this species fetishism in earlier work, this is also why we have zoos).
We are at a point in time when humans are too dominant in social relations and ecosystems, and we need to rethink the figure of the human for the sake of other animals and ours. This begins with listening.
AS: Some linguists claim that only humans possess the capacity for symbolic abstraction, which they see as the defining feature of language. How would you respond to that view?
EM: Interestingly, linguists are now slowly embracing the idea that language is not just a human capacity. But your question points to a deeper issue. There are two ways of thinking about animals and language. The first is to take human language as a blueprint, and see if other animals (can) do the same. This is the view expressed in your question. I believe this is a flawed position. Animals of many species (and probably plants too) express themselves in a multitude of ways, and for many reasons. Fields of study like biology and ethology show that their inner lives, social lives, and cultures are much more complex than we long thought. Of course, certain indigenous cultures and Eastern philosophies like Daoism have long understood this, but in Animal Languages I focused on the Western paradigm. The richness and complexity of the expressions of nonhuman animals, and forms of multispecies interaction that we know of now, ask us to rethink what ‘language’ is. This is the second approach to language, and this is not so much an empirical but a philosophical question. The point is not that other animals need to prove anything, or that humans should define what they have or not (which is very problematic): we should rethink what language means and can mean in interactions with other animals. I write this as a philosopher, but I am also a novelist, poet, and visual artist, and I have learned that language works very differently when used in different circumstances and worlds. An academic article shows something else of our world than a poem. Language is much more than a ‘capacity for symbolic abstraction’ — it roots us in life, and offers us a way to give what we see back to others, and (co-)shape social reality.
AS: You emphasize that animals are not just passive subjects but active participants in political and social dynamics. Could you share some examples where animal communication directly influences decision-making within their communities?
EM: I cannot imagine a case in which communication does not influence decision-making within their communities, unless there is perhaps a clear imbalance of power in which there is one person in the group who decides (the model of the dictator).
AS: Given that most research on animal languages is conducted through human-designed experiments, how can we ensure that our methodologies respect animal agency and the authenticity of their communication?
EM: This is an open question, and one that many ethologists and philosophers are thinking about at the moment. We know that prejudice has long shaped the setup of scientific experiments, and thus the outcomes — Vinciane Despret convincingly shows how this works in What would animals say if we asked the right questions?. The questions humans ask from other animals determine the circumference of their answer. Currently, many scholars are trying to get to know more about what other animals want from us, instead of the other way around, and how we can co-create knowledge and forms of politics through ethnographic research. For example, in multispecies households and animal sanctuaries like VINE Sanctuary. There the animal residents are recognized as elders and leaders, and the agency of the nonhumans is central to how the community functions.
In a recent book, Multispecies Dialogues, I propose to use the model of the dialogue as a way of co-creating knowledge about how to live together with others. Dialogues are processes, there are questions and responses, we speak and listen, we take time and are open to others. In the multispecies context, they involve not only words but also embodied, material and other forms of interaction, like creating habits and rituals, or changing the landscape.
Through respectfully engaging in dialogues with those who are other than us we can adjust our standpoints and learn. Learning is very important when it comes to critiquing violence and co-creating more just forms of living with others.
AS: You propose that acknowledging animal languages can reshape our ethical responsibilities towards them. What happens if we misinterpret their signals? Could well-intentioned efforts lead to unintended consequences?
EM: The question of language is deeply political. Who can speak, who is seen as capable of language, is always a political question, also in the case of humans (think of Spivak’s famous question: Can the subaltern speak?). Other animals have been denied language and actively silenced in many social and political structures. The question of language is currently furthermore situated in a very violent world in which billions of nonhuman animals are tortured and killed for food, medicines, and other things that benefit humans. Humans benefit from their silence. So, while we should indeed listen to them, individually and as societies, in order to know how to move forward and how to act ethically, we also need to create the social and political structures under which their voices can be heard, which asks for resistance and activism.
AS: In “The Limits of My Language”, you explore how depression disrupts the relationship between language and self-expression. Do you think there are moments when silence or the absence of language can communicate experiences more truthfully than words ever could?
EM: Yes. Silence can take many forms. Some are oppressive, like the silencing of nonhuman animals I just discussed. But silence can also be a space for transformation, a hiding place, and a place of beauty.
AS: Wittgenstein’s philosophy is a key influence in your book. While his reflections on language’s limits are profound, some might argue they can also lead to a sense of futility. Do you see a way for these insights to foster resilience instead?
EM: I will skip this question because I don’t really engage with this.
AS: Depression often isolates people not only from others but from language itself. Yet, many artists and writers draw from that isolation to create meaningful work. Do you think the act of creation can be a form of resistance against the constraints of language?
EM: Like I briefly discussed in relation to the manifold ways in which nonhuman animals express themselves, the word ‘language’ refers to many different practices. In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein writes that the clothing of language makes everything look alike — concepts deceive us, because they seem to refer to one phenomenon, while in fact they refer to many. From this perspective, I don’t think you can separate creation and language. Art can involve different forms of language (think for example of poetry, slogans like the work of Jenny Holzer, or novels) that can express the feeling or phenomenon of depression. I do think the act of creation can be a response to the absurdity of life, and the experience of existential emptiness. For me is.
AS: You write about how language shapes our understanding of emotional pain. How do you think the language we use around mental health contributes to stigma? How can we create a more compassionate and inclusive narrative?
EM: In many capitalist societies around the world, depression is framed as an illness of the individual, that can be cured with medicines or therapy. This medical lens locates the source of depression in life experiences and/or someone’s chemical make-up. But there are also other ways of thinking about depression. The English writer Mark Fisher argues that capitalism makes us depressed. Studies also show the influence of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination on the mental health of marginalized social groups. Larger power structures influence how we think and feel, so we need a more critical discourse around depression that may include but also moves beyond the medical framework, and looks beyond the individual.
We also need to develop new narratives about care. I live in the Netherlands, which is an individualist society which currently has a right extremist government. There is not much care for other humans, let alone nonhuman animals. There is also less and less room to discuss care, or anything really, with others who think differently. The space for democratic action and debate is closing.
For challenging these political tendencies, art and literature are probably our best bet at the moment. Together with a friend, Miriam Reeders, who is also an artist, I began the project ‘The association for the promotion of solace’ in which we speak with people who are ill, and who are not, about solace, and we create art work around this topic. A second example of a counter practice concerns multispecies care. I am answering these questions in March, and this is always the time of the amphibian migration in my village. The frogs, toads and salamanders who live here come out of hibernation. They travel from the gardens to the ponds and five years ago I set up a group to help them cross the streets safely, because many of them were killed by cars and buses. We now have over twenty volunteers who walk the streets in the evening. This practice expresses and generates care, for the nonhumans and the humans in the group. It also changes the narrative of the larger town. These small scale practices of gentle resistance, like the art project and the amphibian group, are at the basis of viewing the world differently. We do not need to speak louder, but we need to make space for the quiet voices, human and nonhuman.
AS: Congratulations on your new book “Multispecies Assemblies” — it’s a fascinating and ambitious project! You propose a model of decision-making where animals, plants, and ecosystems have a say. Given the entrenched power imbalances between humans and non-humans, how can we ensure these assemblies are truly equitable?
EM: This book is the follow up to my earlier work about animals, language and politics. After When animals speak came out, in which I discuss the politics of animal languages and the language of multispecies democracy, many humans asked me what sort of political model we need for doing politics with other animals. Nonhuman animals are political agents too, they form their own communities, and we (humans and other animals) live in multispecies communities. These are currently however characterized by great violence, and as you mention, an imbalance of power. I long refused to answer this question, because I believe we should develop new models of doing politics together with other animals — otherwise we run the risk of repeating human epistemic and political oppression. Still, we do need to start somewhere. And multispecies assemblies can offer this ‘somewhere’. Quite literally, because they are tied to a specific place. The basic idea is that all beings who belong in that place — nonhuman animals, plants, fungi, human children, natural entities, adult humans, and others — have a right to it, and should be able to co-determine questions about housing, food, education, care, and so on. So they need to come together in assemblies — sometimes directly, sometimes through material interventions — in which many beings can speak for themselves and some (like natural entities or animals who do not want to participate) need to be represented by others.
Multispecies assemblies can play a role in moving towards just multispecies communities, but they can also be a model of government in these communities. Because of the dominant position of humans in the lives of most others, humans have the responsibility to start the deliberation — in the book I describe a 5-phase process. But after assemblies exist for longer and there is a stronger common repertoire of acting, relations become more equal. Power imbalances will always exist, but we can choose to exploit others on the basis of it, or to live in ways that are just and sustainable (morally sustainable too).
AS: You’re advocating for humans to listen to non-human voices. Even within human societies, marginalized groups often struggle to be heard. How can multispecies assemblies avoid replicating those patterns of exclusion?
EM: I see these questions not as separate — linguistic and political exclusions of human and nonhuman groups often function similarly. Challenging them requires mapping oppression (including mapping silences), listening, and finding new forms of interaction based on respectful engagement. This is an ongoing democratic task, because like Rancière writes, there will always be new groups that we currently do not recognize as political agents, or as subjects. Importantly, the multispecies assembly is not just a political mode of government: it is also a model for co-creating knowledge.
AS: In many indigenous worldviews, non-humans are already considered political and spiritual agents. How has your thinking been informed by these perspectives, and how do you ensure that this engagement remains respectful rather than extractive?
EM: This project has roots in different philosophical traditions. Anarchist thought and practice are obviously a great influence, but the ideas also are indebted to the work of my colleagues in political animal philosophy like Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Daoist philosophy, feminist and decolonial theory, the activist work I do, artists and novelists, and, most importantly, engagement with actual nonhuman animals. Though it is situated in the Western tradition of political philosophy, which I criticize, in the book I also refer to the work of indigenous thinkers like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who writes about viewing the communities of other animals as nations, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, who offers important insights for thinking about respectful relations with plants. But there is also a deeper connection: the model of the assembly is itself an ancient democratic model for decision-making in many different cultures, as David Graeber describes in Fragments of an anarchist anthropology.
When it comes to respectful engagement with marginalized thinkers like those coming from the indigenous theory and practice you mention, in the human case there exist different practices, like citing thinkers who influenced you and pointing others to their work, making explicit how power relations structure academic and other discourses, which is part of this book too, and honoring and mentioning those who do and did important work. For other animals we currently lack these practices. Together with a human, G.C. Heemskerk, and nonhumans Wiske Heemskerk, Miemel Bots and Doris, Miez and Zmeu Meijer, I form a multispecies art collective (https://themultispeciescollective.cargo.site/), with which we create art for and with nonhumans. We explicitly focus on ‘giving back’ because most art with and about other animals is extractivist. Maybe we need to develop new practices of giving back in the human case in academia as well.
AS: Some might argue that representing non-human interests through human proxies is inherently problematic. How do we navigate the risks of misrepresentation while still giving voice to those who can’t advocate for themselves in traditional ways?
We need better forms of representation. In the assembly, those who can speak for themselves (like nonhuman animals, human children and some plants) do, and others (like mountains or forests) are represented. This representation is always based on interaction-with, and part of a learning process.
EM: Let’s say a conflict arises in a multispecies assembly — perhaps between the needs of a local community and the preservation of an ecosystem. How would you suggest such conflicts be resolved without defaulting to human interests?
This is a question that cannot be answered in the abstract. In certain cases, humans may need to intervene, given human dominance in nearly all ecosystems. New assemblies might need more human guidance. But in other circumstances, the interests of others might be prioritized by the community. Often our interests will be entangled.
AS: Some critics might see your vision as utopian, especially in the face of urgent ecological crises. How would you respond to those who argue that we don’t have the luxury of experimenting with multispecies democracy when immediate action is needed?
EM: It is not either/or: we need many forms of activism to change oppressive structures, and we need to listen attentively to other beings in order to know where we need to head. Above I mentioned the work of Despret, who writes that anthropocentrism in science and society led to stereotypical ideas about other animals in biology and ethology. This is true for other nonhumans, like plants, too, as is argued convincingly by many scholars in critical plant studies. So we do need to pay attention to them to even know what is just and what to advocate for. Furthermore, our task as humans is to become humbler and begin to listen to others. Assemblies can help us to practice.
AS: Your work focuses on creating spaces for non-human voices. How can we foster a cultural shift where people genuinely value and prioritize those voices? Do you see examples of this already happening?
EM: As I briefly touched upon above, in the Netherlands we have entered a political reality in which the right of the loudest prevails. The softer voices — of those who are ill, young, old, nonhuman — are not heard. There is little room for dialogue because politicians speak in monologues, and this is amplified by how the media and social media works. The same is happening in the USA. Activists needs to find new routes and develop new practices, because being louder, or showing violence, does not work anymore, it only adds to the logic of yes and no, and makes this logic stronger. I do see counter practices, as I discussed in different examples above, but I think all of us in Europe, the US, and perhaps other countries too, have a long and intensifying democratic struggle ahead of us.
AS: If we were to fast-forward 100 years and your vision of multispecies assemblies had become a reality, what do you imagine the world would look like? How would human and non-human relationships have changed?
EM: In the coming decades, everyone on the planet will most likely be confronted with an acceleration of the climate crisis, including global heating and rising sea levels, and with an increasing loss of biodiversity and extinction of species. On the level of ‘world’, which I take to mean the planet, things will get worse. But our world is made up of many different worlds, as anthropologist Arturo Escobar points out, and in these different life-worlds we can counter this great violence. How precisely multispecies life-worlds will evolve once humans change their behavior will depend on the agents involved. Many nonhuman animals will probably want nothing to do with humans, but others might give us a second chance. Plants and natural entities might cope better with the challenges ahead if humans take their responsibility, and begin to take their interests and agency seriously. In building new relations, humans can and should learn from nonhumans. If we want to do better, there is no other way.
Eva Meijer is a philosopher, visual artist, writer and singer-songwriter. They write novels, philosophical essays, academic texts, poems and columns, and their work has been translated into over twenty languages. Recurring themes are language including silence, madness, nonhuman animals, and politics. Meijer also works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, writes essays and columns for Dutch newspapers, is a member of the Multispecies Collective and De Vereniging ter Bevordering van Troost (The Association for the Promotion of Consolation).
