Legal rights require rigid binary categories that reject graded differences

Evidence

Wise wants the partition between humans and nonhumans to be flexible, but he cannot do without it. He does not employ the notion of overlapping and intrinsically differentiated networks because human rights law seems to require mutually exclusive categories (human/nonhuman, guilty/not guilty, legal person/nonperson). The assumption is that to qualify for rights “they” must be sufficiently like “us”—and conversely, that if they are too unlike us, they cannot be redeemed. Wise insists that the statement “Animals can’t have human rights” seems like a scientific truth about the world but it is simply a formula for privileging humans over animals (or better, over “mere life”). — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 755

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Asad’s broader argument that modern secular categories (human/animal, sacred/secular) operate as mutually exclusive binaries rather than overlapping networks. — connects to: Legal right is distinct from the underlying appropriative tie between person and thing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1365; Formal legal equality obscures real inequality because equivalence as a legal norm ignores difference — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 786; Legal equality before the law requires negating actual individuality — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 793 (+1 more)