Lisa Siraganian, "The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots" (Verso, 2026)
About this episode
Lisa Siraganian discusses the implications of granting personhood rights to nonhuman entities in her book.
Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants. The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman.Lisa Siraganian’s The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots (Verso, 2026) reveals the unsettling consequences of granting rights to imagined persons, such as Sophia the robot citizen or New Zealand’s Whanganui River. Synthesizing the political and philosophical debates on personhood and drawing on a varied cast of thinkers that includes Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Dr. Seuss, Siraganian uncovers the disturbing impact of this contemporary development. Awarding rights to robots and rivers all too easily becomes a legal tool to turn people into capital. When robot Sophia is made a citizen, “she” is transformed into a subject in the law without the corresponding legal duties that protect us from her.At the root of this trend is the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that grants First Amendment rights to…
People in this episode
Guest: Lisa Siraganian
Topics covered
- personhood
- rights
- corporations
- nonhuman entities
- legal implications
- philosophical debates
Keywords
- personhood
- rights
- corporations
- robots
- environment
- legal system
- Citizens United
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Verso, US Supreme Court
Books & works: The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots
Places: New Zealand, Whanganui River
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