This talk will challenge the dominant approach to animal rights, both legally and philosophically, which often extends, or rather, attempts to extend, human legal rights to animals. I argue that this strategy could serve to further reinforce an anthropocentric legal system that is already rigid and limited. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s concepts of neganthropy and technics, alongside niche construction theory and Foucault’s notion

of heterotopia, I propose an alternative approach to animal liberation that moves beyond the juridico-philosophical constraints of personhood and property. Using the case of Happy the elephant and the failed habeas corpus petition brought on her behalf, I introduce the idea of heterotopic ossification—a way to describe how legal and spatial systems confine captive animals in a permanent state of in-between existence, both biologically and legally. I suggest that rights function like hostile architecture: they appear protective and well-intentioned but actually trap humans and nonhumans alike within capitalist and technocratic structures of control. I also highlight how Western law links rights to ownership and possession, inescapably tying personhood to property and reinforcing extractive, capitalist, and individualist logics. Instead of extending this framework, I will call for us to consider a new legal architecture built on care, creativity, and shared environments. This approach seeks to open possibilities for justice that support all forms of life, beyond human domination.