The Exception Derrida – The “Secret Elect” of the Animals

Abstract

This paper intends above all to highlight three fundamental interconnected questions: (1) without reifying it in a theoretical-systematic philosophy, to highlight Derrida’s Deconstruction as a “philosophical idiom” – that of différance or of the ab-solute otherness – endowed, therefore, with specific “theoretical” assumptions (khôra, messianic and trace); (2) to highlight and to clarify the meaning of the “Derridian exception” concerning the issue of the animal and animality within the context of the sacrificial philosophical-cultural Westernness; (3) to highlight the relevance of the issue of the animal and animality in order to re-think, in new terms, the question of the human itself – still essentially structured in the light of a metaphysical subjectivity –, underlining the invaluable contribution of Deconstruction to rethink the exceptionality of the human among the living beings and to bring the war for compassion to a successful end, thus contributing to the emergence of new Lights for the promise of the “coming” [“à-venir”] of another humanity and, consequently, of another civilization.

Keywords:

• animal
• carno-phallogocentrism
• compassion
• cruelty
• ecology
• sacrificial tradition

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Jacques Derrida, L’animal que donc je suis (Galilée, 2006), 50 – The Animal That Therefore I Am, English translation by David Wills (Fordham UP, 2008), 29. Henceforth: Animal.

2 Let’s emphasize it: “I want to be a philosopher in particular, a professional philosopher. I believe in the necessity of philosophy as such” (Jacques Derrida, “Le corps et le corpus,” Jacques Derrida, L’Entretien, 3rd ed. (du sous-sol, 2017), 18).

3 Derrida, Animal 62.

4 Ibid.

5 Cf. Lévinas, Humanisme.

6 Although, as Derrida gives us to read and to think about in Adieu, to Emmanuel Lévinas – and he is the only philosopher to do so – , along with androcentric hyperbole, it is possible to detect the coexistence of a feminist hyperbole in Lévinas’s thought and work: a kind of “avant la lettre feminism.”

7 Abensour 55–84.

8 Lévinas, “Dialogue” 225.

9 Derrida, Animal 29.

10 Cf. Derrida, Monolinguisme 81–82.

11 Cf. Derrida, Séminaire. La bête et le souverain II: 54–55.

12 Derrida, Animal 9.

13 “Humanity (still the ‘promise’), the humanity of man it’s still a brand new concept for the philosopher who doesn’t sleep standing up. The age-old question of man’s own remains entirely to be elaborated” (Jacques Derrida, Papier Machine (Galilée, 2001), 324).

14 Cf. de Fontenay 208.

15 Derrida, “Non pas l’utopie, l’im-possible” 349–66.

16 “Le survivre est un concept qui ne se derive pas. Il y a survie, dès qu’il y a trace […], c’est la forme même de l’expérience et du désir inéluctable” (Jacques Derrida, Sur Parole (de l’aube, 1999), 51).

17 For this question, cf. also Derrida, La vie la mort. Séminaire 1975–1976.

18 Derrida, Animal 11.

19 Cf. ibid. 32.

20 Derrida and Roudinesco 106.

21 “[L]ogocentrism is first of all a thesis regarding the animal, the animal deprived of the logos, deprived of the can-have-the-logos” (Derrida, Animal 27).

22 For the question of “carno-phallogocentrisme,” see, in namely, “Il faut bien manger” (Derrida, Points de suspension).

23 Derrida, De la Grammatologie 19–20.

24 Ibid. 103.

25 See, in particular, Jacques Derrida, “Spéculer – sur ‘Freud,’” La Carte Postale (Flammarion, 1980), 275ff.; Résistances – de la psychanalyse (Galilée, 1996); États d’âme de la psycanalyse (Galilée, 2000).

26 Derrida, Animal 104.

27 Derrida, Doner la mort 114ff.

28 “The ‘logic’ of the trace or of the différance determines reappropriation as ex-appropriation […] The ex-appropriation is not the man’s own” (Derrida, De la Grammatologie 283).

29 Derrida, Animal 156ff.

30 See Nancy.

31 Although, at the limit, the issue is always that of the modality of the relationship between the “living” and the “non-living,” as Derrida refers to it – let us remember this above all to those who claim that Derrida forgot the vegetable world – in “Il faut bien manger” (Points de suspension 284):

The difference between the “animal” and the “vegetable” remains equally problematic. Of course, the relation to oneself in ex-appropriation is radically different (which is why it is a question of a thought of the différance, not of the opposition) if it is a question of what is called the “non-living,” the “vegetable,” the “animal,” “man” or “God.” The question always boils down to the difference between the living and the non-living.

32 Cf. de Fontenay 208.

33 It is precisely in the context of this ingestion – real, in the case of animals, and symbolic, in the case of humans – that Derrida very critically questions the need for ingestion of animal proteins: “and to who will be made to believe,” asks the philosopher in “Il faut bien manger” “that our cultures are carnivorous because animal proteins would be irreplaceable?” (Points de suspension 293). However, in its dominant schema, the carno-phallus-logo-centric tradition implies the “carnivorous virility.” For this question, see also Derrida, “La mélancolie d’Abraham” 54.

34 Derrida, “La mélancolie d’Abraham” 54.

35 See, namely, Jacques Derrida, Le droit à la philosophie du point de vue cosmopolitique (Unesco/Verdier, 1997), 33ff.; “Un ver à soi,” Voiles, by Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous (Galilée, 1998), 25ff.; L’animal que donc je suis, op. cit. 69.

36 Derrida, Animal 32.

37 “Basically, the question of sacrifice is central everywhere. In my opinion, there is a link between the great canonical question of the so-called sacrifice of Isaac and the carnivorous sacrifice” (Derrida, “La mélancolie d’Abraham” 53).

38 See also Elisabeth de Fontenay, “Un abécédaire,” Qui sont les animaux?, edited by Jean Birnbaum (Gallimard, 2010), 28.

39 Martin Heidegger, Les Concepts fondamentaux de la métaphysique, translated by Daniel Panis (Gallimard, 1992), § 42, 267.

40 In Emmanuel Lévinas, Carnets de Captivité et autres inédits (Grasset/IMEC, 2009), 105, it can be read: “The human foot – its humble appearance, poor animal. It is the two ‘paws’ that still have the function of the animal in man. Hands on the contrary.”

41 “Humanism should only be denounced for not being human enough” (Lévinas, Autrement qu’être 164).

42 Derrida, Mémoires d’aveugle 10, 127–30.

43 Derrida, Animal 20.

44 Ibid. 19–20.

45 Cf. Lévinas, Autrement qu’être 157.

46 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Kitchener; Batoche Books, 2000).

47 Plutarque, Trois Traités pour les animaux, translated by Amyot (POL, 1992).

48 Montaigne, Michel de, Essais, II, ch. XII, Apologie de Raymond Sebond (Gallimard, 1950).

49 “The said question of the said animal in its entirety comes down to knowing not whether the animal speaks but whether one can know what respond means. And how to distinguish a response from a reaction” (Derrida, Animal 8).

50 See also Derrida, Séminaire. La bête et le souverain I: 176–77, 316–19.

51 “The absolutely other is the other” (Lévinas, Totalité et Infini 28).

52 Cf. Jacques Derrida, “A Desconstrução e o Outro,” Derrida – o dom da différance, by Fernanda Bernardo (Palimage, 2019), 15–42.

53 Derrida, “Le lieu dit: Strasbourg” 31, 39–40.

54 Derrida, Animal 11.

55 Derrida, Béliers 76–77.

56 Cf. Derrida, Animal 1, 3–4.

57 Cf. Derrida, Animal 4. The eve of time is just as likely to take the form of the promise as of the threat.

58 Cf. Derrida, Animal 32.

59 Ibid. 62.

60 Ibid. 3–4.

61 Derrida, Khôra.

62 Cf. Derrida, Foi et savoir 30ff.

63 Cf. Derrida, “Abraham, l’autre” 11–42.

64 Derrida, “La mélancolie d’Abraham” 54–55.

65 For this question, see Jacques Derrida, “Un témoignage donné … ,” Questions au Judaïsme, by Elisabeth Weber (Desclée de Brouwer, 1996), 73–104.

66 Jacques Derrida, Apories (Galilée, 1996), 140.

67 Derrida, “Abraham, l’autre” 41–42.