THE QUESTION OF THE ANIMAL SUBJECT

Abstract

To the three classic wounds to human narcissism – that of Copernicus (man does not live in a geocentric universe), Darwin (man is an animal), and Freud (man is not the master of his unconscious) – there must be appended a fourth wound: man is not the only subject in the universe. While most philoso- phers are unwilling to accept it, ethological research shows that animals are also subjects; indeed, in human/animal hybrid communities, certain animals can become individuals or even persons. Through animal biography, anec- dotes, and other often disqualified but nonethe- less empirical forms of knowledge, we can come to know these singular animals.

Keywords:

• subjectification
• anecdote
• singular animal
• animal subject

Notes

Translated from Dominique Lestel, L'Animal singulier (Paris: Seuil, 2004). © Editions du Seuil, 2004.

1 See the noteworthy discussion of Heidegger's representation of the animal by Giorgio Agamben in The Open.

2 I cannot help but refer to a passage in Philip K. Dick's Ubik, in which the hero haggles with the door of his apartment over the price of its opening.

3 Let us not forget an important point regarding the philosopher's role and situation. Let us say, for simplicity's sake, that I believe our practices are always ahead of our thinking, and the role of the philosopher is to shed light on the nature of presuppositions and beliefs that uphold activities – not to judge them but to explain them and enable their critical evaluation. Hegel explained this very well.

4 Other authors such as psychologist Julian Jaynes do not hesitate to go further, attributing the phenomenon of consciousness with a clearly identifiable historical origin.

5 Macfarlane Burnet introduced the idea of “self” in immunology in 1940 in his book Biological Aspects of Infectious Disease, in which he describes in detail the way in which an amoeba digests its prey. On the richness of Burnet's notion of “self” and on the importance this innovation had for cell biology, the reader can refer to an enlightening article by Eileen Crist and Alfred Tauber.

6 See the novel Rat by Andrzej Zaniewski.

7 We need to develop a true ethno-cognition, which is to say a precise and detailed study of the ways in which members of a given culture conceptualize cognitive processes (the competence and performance of the agents amongst whom they live: humans, animals, spirits, etc.), their epistemology (the ways to know the nature of what is known and what is unknown), and the manners in which they use these representations in order to determine what can be known and what cannot, etc.

8 Conversely, it would be interesting to understand why some are incapable of being “co-personal” with certain humans that they find so different from them. The whole question of racism could be revisited on this basis.

9 My attention was drawn to the question of interior/exterior by Wioletta Misckiewicz from Archives Husserl.