Draft Conference Paper - Inter

(Re)designing the human-animal cartography:
towards an ecophilosophy of reciprocity
Márcia Seabra Neves
Western thought is rooted in the Judaic-Christian tradition and
strongly influenced by Descartes’s mechanistic theory and has
always presupposed that Man and Animal be defined more in terms
of rupture and less in terms of mediation. However, from the second
half of the twentieth century forth, we have witnessed a true
revolution in the way this long-held dichotomy is conceptualized.
The ethical-scientific reassessment of the animal, as well as the
proliferation of pets in the last few decades have led to a
reconfiguration of the relations between humans and non-humans,
gradually centred on interaction and sharing of interests and
meanings.
Due to this new reality, the hegemonic contemporary discourse on
animality (from which we highlight the work of Jacques Derrida and
Dominique Lestel) has made it a priority to renegotiate the humananimal cartography, born out of the borders that have so far separated
the two realms.
1. The omnipresence of the animal in human culture takes us back
to its most remote origins, since which men and animals have
cooperated in a surprising variety of mixed and interspecific
relationships. Dominique Lestel calls these hybrid communities,
describing them as ‘une association d’hommes et d’animaux dans
une culture donnée, qui constitue un espace de vie pour les uns et
pour les autres, dans lequel sont partagés des intérêts, des affects et
du sens.’1 However, Western thought has not always considered this
association between both species in terms of univocal reciprocity,
rather viewing it from an anthropocentric standpoint that gave Man
the absolute domain over other species.
Nevertheless, over the last decades of the twentieth century and
especially in the first ten years of the twenty-first century, there has
been a profound change in the relationships between humans and
non-humans and a subsequent reconfiguration of the hybrid
communities has occurred, more and more viewed in terms of
equality or complementarity and excluding any kind of social
contract with mutual duties.2 Thus, Man and Animal become coinhabitants in the same time and in the same space, in mutual
recognition and memory, thereby creating a relationship of ‘cohabitation, d’occupation commune d’un même espace, transformé
par les uns et les autres pour accueillir l’autre dans sa spécificité.’3
This new kind of relationship between man and animal, based on
a sort of reciprocal commitment or affective bond between them,
coincides unequivocally with the proliferation of pets that has taken
place since the middle of last century. In fact, having a pet in the
household is not a recent phenomenon, as it is something deeply
ingrained in human behaviour. Over the last few decades pets have
nonetheless become a living sign of affection as a cultural value of a
highly technocratic, capitalist and industrialized society, in which
human life has been absorbed by technology and real animals
replaced by machines.
Therefore, this tendency of the modern man of being surrounded
by animals no longer fulfils utilitarian interests but meets a vital need
for contact with the true animal essence, the only possible presence
that keeps us linked to a transformed and evermore distant nature.
Thus, the animal becomes an otherness endowed with meaning,
because it allows man to forge an identity by rethinking the
relationships with other living beings and their place within the
human community.4
It is understandable that in a society which is growing more
individualistic and isolated, in which one loses the notion of the
other, pets have become an integral part of the individual and
familiar imagination, almost like a person. Modern man seems to
seek in pets a place of affection and sharing, a friend, a companion, a
relative, or, so to speak, a surrogate of a human being. Pets play the
role of ersatz, which Alain Montandon defines as ‘la focalisation de
toutes les frustrations, de tous les manques et de toutes les déceptions
pour être investi des restes de l’amour et de la libido.’5
This co-existence of animals and humans collides with the
conceptualization of the animal as the archetype or symbol of man
and not only contributes to blur the boundaries that have always
separated them but also represents a fundamental step towards
defining the animal in its own right and not as a counterpart to
humans. As it is, Western thought has been changing its theoretical
stance on the dichotomy humanity / animality and seems to be
growing more committed to giving animals the status of subject and
recognizing their own subjectivity, dissenting from the speciescentred and anthropocentric rationalism that only contributes to
objectify and marginalize animals.
2. Throughout the twentieth century, the animal is, then, gradually
given its own ontology. Among the theoreticians that have decisively
contributed to the institution of this ontological continuum and to the
deconstruction of the preponderant logocentric humanism, we find
Jacques Derrida and his ecophilosophy of alterity.
In his stimulating essay, revealingly entitled ‘L’animal que donc
je suis’ (‘The animal that thus I am’), Jacques Derrida’s starting
point is his experience of finding himself completely naked under the
gaze of a cat. He develops a long reflexion about the limits between
man and animal – not the metaphorically and anthropocentrically
viewed animal but the real animal, that other that exists and faces us
and can come and meet us. The philosopher starts by questioning his
own identity of animal-human:
Souvent je me demande, moi, pour voir, qui je suis – et qui je suis au
moment où, surpris nu, en silence, par le regard d’un animal, par exemple
les yeux d’un chat, j’ai du mal, oui, du mal à surmonter une gêne.6
To feel scrutinized in all his nudity and frailness by the silent and
observing gaze of an animal confronted him with the abyssal limit of
man, the frontier he would have to cross to reach the animal, ‘à
l’animal en soi, à l’animal en moi et à l’animal en mal de lui-même.’7
This crossing to the sphere of the unhuman and the awareness of
the existence of an animal otherness are key factors in a true
3 understanding of animality, based on the animal’s own features and
not on the endless catalogue of man’s own features.
Following this line of thought, Derrida distinguishes between two
types of discourse about animals: that of those who have never
exchanged gazes with an animal and therefore make a theorem of it,
that is, something to be seen and that cannot see, and that of those
who feed on this exchange of gazes with the animal and therefore
take its point of view into account.8
In the first category, the French philosopher includes all
philosophers from Descartes to his time (Descartes, Kant, Heidegger,
Lacan and Lévinas), who took the animal as a generic whole to be
observed and who refused to admit that it could also have a specific
world, not necessarily poorer than that of a human. Thus,
Heidegger’s assumption that the animal’s world is poor is
unreservedly refused by Derrida, who disagrees from all this lineage
of theoreticians who used animals as a simple theoretical construct to
legitimize human rationality and language, which they considered to
be superior attributes that place humans above all other living beings
and reinforce the division between humanity and animality.9
The second type of discourse about animals belongs to poets and
prophets and materializes either as poetry or prophecy. Derrida does
not know any representative figures of this category, but he places
himself in it. These are the ones who allow animals to gaze at them
and become receptive to a blurring of the frontiers and a tightening
of the bonds between both species. In short, these are all that, like
Derrida, claim a logos and a pathos for the animal.
Therefore, by striving for the recognition of a plural and
differentiated view of animals, Derrida criticizes the use of the term
animal in the generic singular, as he considers it to be an
anthropocentric categorization which gathers all non-human living
creatures in an abstract and homogenous concept. To replace this
reducing singular, the philosopher coins the term animot (animal +
mot), which is actually pronounced like the French plural animaux
and points to the concept of word or verbal language, which has been
used to signal the insoluble limit between man and animal.10
Actually, Jacques Derrida does not deny the existence of a limit
between man and animal. He does protest against the comparativist
approach of the relationship between humanity / animality that has
polarized Western philosophical thought throughout the centuries, by
the defenders of both monist and dualist theses, because all of them
approach the issue of the animal in relation to human, erasing the
differences between them and the specific traits of the first.11
In Derrida’s perspective, thinking about human and non-human is
not about finding similarities between the species but about
reaffirming their limits and recognizing the differences, thereby
giving each living being an identity and subjectivity of its own. In
other words, thinking about animality and the limits of the human is
only made possible due to the différance12 or the becoming-animal, a
concept coined by Deleuze and Guattari to signal a transit between
humanity and animality, a movement which takes place not by
imitation or identification but by symbiosis or fusion between human
and non-human.13
In these terms, becoming-animal is not about imitating the animal
nor about projecting one’s identity onto it. It is about stepping out of
oneself, of uprooting oneself and crossing the mysterious and
enigmatic border between human and animal, in search of new
worlds. In order to become animal, man will have to become other,
foreign to himself. This unchartering of territory does not imply a
blurring of identities; however, animal and human are no longer
homogenous entities, thus arising from the fusion between them an
area of indistinction, that is, ‘une zone objective d’indétermination
ou d’incertitude, quelque chose de commun ou d’indiscernable, un
voisinage qui fait qu’il est impossible de dire où passe la frontière de
l’animal et de l’humain.’14
Therefore, this leads to the erosion of the dichotomy man / animal,
as the one will destabilize the other’s territory, without a trace of the
traditional focus on species. The self loses its centre and moves
closer to the other.
3. More recently, Dominique Lestel’s studies have shed some
light on a new perspective inherent to the animal issue, presenting a
5 renewed view on the relationships between humans and non-humans
and a more updated version of the twentieth-first-century
anthropological machine. The French philosopher and ethologist
argues that in virtue of scientific discoveries and subsequent
scientific development (anthropological, ethnological and most of all
ethological), as well as philosophical progress over the past years,
the status of man needs to be reviewed and that of humanity
rethought from a new perception of the world and the line separating
it from inhumanity needs to be redefined. This means that man has
never undergone a period during which questions and perplexities
pertaining to his status as a human being have become so pervasive,
confronting him with the deepest identity crisis of his history.15
One of the main causes for this identity crisis might have been the
ethological reconceptualization of the animal as a subject and, more
precisely, as a hermeneutical subject, that is able to act according to
interpretations of itself, of others and of the world surrounding it:
Un animal est un sujet en ce sens qu’il interprète des significations et qu’il
n’est ni une machine behavioriste qui réagit de façon instinctive à des
stimuli extérieurs, ni une machine cognitive qui traite de l’information.16
Dominique Lestel also considers that some animals go beyond the
status of subject-animal to acquire that of an individual, or, in other
words, ‘des sujets dotés d’une individualité opérationnelle et des
représentations de soi qui en découlent.’17
Thus, starting from the concept of individual as a creature
endowed with a specific personality that distinguishes it from others
and whose particular cognitive or behavioural features are
maintained throughout a given timeframe, the author of L’Animal
Singulier describes these animals as subject-individual-animals:
Ces animaux ont une histoire. Ils ont des caractéristiques
comportementales et cognitives qui leur sont propres, qui restent
consistantes à travers le temps, et qui diffèrent sensiblement de celles des
autres membres du groupe au sein duquel ils vivent.18
Man therefore discovers that he is not the only subject in the
universe, now inhabited by other non-humans that can become
individuals and even people. This, according to Dominique Lestel,
represents the fourth narcissistic wound inflicted to the already
fragmented twenty-first-century man:
C’est, à mon sens, la véritable révolution scientifique des sciences de
l’animal de ces vingt dernières années: l’humain n’est plus le seul sujet
dans l’univers. Il s’y trouve d’autres sujets non humains qui peuvent
devenir de surcroît des individus ou des personnes. Après Copernic
(l’homme n’est plus au centre du monde), Darwin (l’homme est une
espèce d’animal), Freud (l’homme est le jouet de son inconscient),
l’homme rencontre ainsi une quatrième blessure narcisique.19
As it happens, if the authentication of the non-human subject
renders the borders that allow man to think of himself as man
ineffective, this blurring of the ontological limits of the relationship
between animal and human becomes even more problematic in a
highly mechanized society, in which scientific progress and new
technologies have revolutionized the very nature and theory of the
subject-animal.
The emergence of an autonomous robotics and the manipulation
of the living being by biotechnology have resulted in hybrid
creatures (machines which look like animals or animals generated by
genetic manipulation). These creatures make the task of
distinguishing between artificial and natural even more complex,
inducing us to rethink the concept of animality as well as our
relationships with the animal. In the context of hypermodernity, these
relationships are more and more subject to the triangle man / animal /
artefact.20
Therefore, according to Dominique Lestel, that which
distinguishes the human from the remaining animals is the rational
ability to take possession of his features as a general living creature
to form his own ontological identity. As the author points out, the
human is not at last the ultimate result of Evolution, though it pleases
him to believe so sometimes, but the one who inverts the
mechanisms.21 Lestel defines the human as an existential vampire,
who thrives on the life of those around him:
7 L’humain ne s’est pas hominisé contre l’animal, comme il l’a longtemps
colporté à tort et à travers, mais en arrachant l’animal à la fatalité d’une
animalité première pour les faire pénétrer dans les espaces d’une animalité
seconde – qui passe par la machine et par la technique. L’essence de cette
dernière renvoie à l’objet sur lequel elle porte; non la transformation de la
matière, ou pas seulement, mais la transformation du vivant lui-même.22
On this line of thought, we can argue that this second-order
animalization or second phase of existential vampirism, fed by
biotechnology, by robotics and by certain cognitive technologies,
corresponds to a postmodern form of anthropocentrism, no longer
focused on the species in the traditional sense of the term, but rather
epistemological in nature, if one considers the domination of man by
science and technology in an increasingly materialized universe,
where the Cartesian thesis of machine-animals is replaced by that of
animal-machines.
In other words, modern Western culture seems to be transforming
the
traditional
declinations
of
anthropocentrism
and
anthropomorphism, which have been the rule for thousands of years,
into obscure phenomena of machinecentrism or machinemorphism,
which Dominique Lestel still contests,23 warning against the dangers
of the aggressive and intolerant rationalism that may be instigated by
a mechanistic and instrumental vision of the world. In this context of
unsustainable dehumanization, the philosopher calls for the need to
rehabilitate the nature of the animal, both human and non-human:
L’animal reste notre allié le plus important pour affronter le défi majeur
de l’Occident au XXIe siècle : comprendre que le rêve de maîtrise absolue
du monde est un fantasme dangereux ; apprendre à protéger nos alliés les
plus précieux sur terre. […] Il s’agit enfin de comprendre qu’opposer
homme et animal n’a tout simplement aucun sens, et que vouloir protéger
l’un sans se soucier de l’autre est tout simplement absurde. Nous devons
admettre que l’animal est l’avenir de l’homme.24
Above all, the issue of the Western anthropological machine in the
twenty-first century is no longer so much the confrontation between
the human and the non-human but much more the ontological
redefinition of both categories in the light of a new phenomenon: the
inhuman. We therefore understand the solidarity and affectionate
togetherness that, in the last decades, have come to occur between
man and animal. The closeness resonates the social phenomenon
many have called modern petishism, in which the pet often represents
a nostalgic reminiscence of a lost nature.
Notes
1
Dominique Lestel, L’animal singulier (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 19. My translation :
‘an association of men and animals within a given culture, which constitutes a
living space for the first and the latter, within which interests, affections and
meanings are shared.’ 2
Dominique Lestel, ‘A animalidade, o humano e as comunidades híbridas’, in
Pensar / escrever o animal. Ensaios de zoopoética e biopolítica, ed. Maria Esther
Maciel (Florianópolis: editora da UFSC, 2011), 23-53.
3
Lestel, L’animal singulier, 17. My translation: ‘common occupation of the same
space, transformed by the first and the latter to welcome the other in their
specificity.’
4
Dominique Lestel, ‘A animalidade, o humano e as comunidades híbridas’, 45. 5
Alain Montandon, “Que nous dit l’animal de nous et de la société? À propos de
Boudjedra, Murakami et Carver”, in Écrire l’animal aujourd’hui, ed. Lucile
Desblache (Clermont-Ferrand : Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, CRLMC,
2006), 15-37. My translation : ‘the focus of all frustrations, all lacking, all
disillusions to become invested with the remainders of love and the libido.’
6
Jacques Derrida, ‘L’animal que donc je suis (à suivre)’, in L’animal
autobiographique, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet (Paris : Galilée, 1999), 251-301. My
translation : ‘Often I ask myself, me, to see who I am – and who I am at a moment
when, surprised naked, in silence, by the gaze of an animal, for example the eyes
of a cat, I feel bad, yes, bad to overcome an uncertainty.’
7
Ibid. My translation: ‘the animal in itself, the animal in myself and the animal in
spite of itself.’
8
Ibid., 264-265.
9
Ibid., 282-283.
10
Ibid., 298-299.
11
Ibid., 280-281.
12
Neologism coined by Derrida to deconstruct the Western logocentrism. The term
joins the words différence and différant (present participle of the verb différer) and
is pronounced the same way as différence, showing that the spelling does not
strictly match the phonetics and the different meanings of a text derive from the
deconstruction of the written language.
9 13
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Mille Plateaux
(Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980), 291.
14
Ibid., 335. My translation: ‘an objective zone of indetermination or uncertainty,
something common or indiscernible, a neighbourhood that makes it impossible to
say where the frontier between animal and human lies.’
15
Dominique Lestel, Les origines animales de la culture (Paris : Flammarion,
2001), 329.
16
Lestel, L’animal singulier, 85. My translation: ‘An animal which is a subject in
the sense that it interprets significations and that it is not a behaviourist machine
which reacts instinctively to exterior stimuli, nor a cognitive machine which treats
information.’
17
Ibid. My translation: ‘subjects gifted with an operational individuality and the
representations of itself that follow.’
18
Ibid., 37. My translation: ‘Those animals have a history. They have behavioural
and cognitive characteristics that are their own, that stay consistent throughout
time, and that differ greatly from those of the other member of the group within
which they live.’
19
Ibid., 60. My translation: ‘That is, in my opinion, the true scientific revolution of
the animal sciences of the last twenty years: the human is no longer the sole
subject of the universe. He meets other non-human subjects that can also become
individuals or people. After Copernicus (man is no longer at the centre of the
world), Darwin (man is a species of animal), Freud (man is the toy of his
subconscious), man is therefore inflicted a fourth narcissistic wound.’
20
Ibid., 97.
21
Ibid., 98.
22
Ibid., 98-99. My translation: ‘The human does not become man against the
animal, as it has long been argued, but by removing the animal from the fatality of
a first-order animality to make it enter the spaces of a second-order animality –
which implies the machine and the technique. The essence of the latter falls on the
object it carries; not the transformation of the matter, but the transformation of the
creature itself.’
23
Dominique Lestel, L’animal est l’avenir de l’homme (Paris : Fayard, 2010), 76.
24
Ibid., 183. My translation: ‘The animal is still our most important ally to face the
greatest challenge of the Western world in the twenty-first century: understanding
that the dream of absolute mastery of the world is a dangerous ghost; learning to
protect our most precious allies on earth. […] Ultimately we need to understand
that opposing man and animal simply makes no sense, and that wanting to protect
one without caring for the other is simply absurd. We must admit that the animal is
the future of man.’
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l’exclusion. Paris : Plon, 2000.
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