Ableism and Speciesism: Tensions and Convergence Between Animal Rights and Disability Rights

The disability rights movement seems to have a low opinion of the animal rights movement. This is notably due to the way the notion of disability gets entangled in the well-known “argument from marginal cases,” and not always for the right reasons. This chapter offers a critical overview of this argument and how it has been interpreted by disability scholars. I will then explore how the disability rights movement sometimes fails to fully appreciate the more promising approaches of animal rights theories, and how these theories can strengthen the rights of people with disability. Finally, I will present an important contribution that disability theories can bring to animal rights, mainly stemming from the social model of disability that revisits notions such as dependency, agency, and citizenship.