Paulina Siemieniec

CAF awarded a grant to Paulina Siemieniec for her project, “Animal Care as Moral Aesthetics.”

“Animal Care as Moral Aesthetics” addresses a fundamental problem in how injustice is recognized and named. Philosopher Paulina Siemieniec introduces the concept of “semantic gaslighting” to describe a pervasive but under-explored phenomenon: widely accepted definitions of moral wrongs (violence, oppression, suffering) are systematically disconnected from their application when animals (and animalized humans) are involved. The subject, rather than the act, becomes the moral determinant, allowing clear violations to remain invisible and normalized.

Against this backdrop, Paulina will write a paper that argues that care labor possesses a tangible moral and aesthetic quality through its conversion of abjection into dignity. Drawing on five years of personal experience volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center, Paulina grounds the theory in concrete, perceivable acts: the precision of measuring exact food portions, the devotion required to manage blood and waste, the emotional attunement between caregiver and animal patient. Justice, the paper argues, can be materially felt and perceived, not merely reasoned.

Paulina Siemieniec is an animal philosopher who specializes in the legal, political, and ethical representation of animals. She has a Ph.D. from Queen’s University and has been published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Between the Species, and the Journal of Animal Ethics.