The Animal That Therefore I AmFordham Univ Press, 2009 M08 25 - 191 páginas The translated, complete text of Derrida’s 1997 ten-hour address, “The Autobiographical Animal,” focusing on the industrialized treatment of animals. The Animal That Therefore I Am is at once an affectionate look back over the multiple roles played by animals in Derrida’s work and a profound philosophical investigation and critique of the relegation of animal life that takes place as a result of the distinction?dating from Descartes?between man as thinking animal and every other living species. That starts with the very fact of the line of separation drawn between the human and the millions of other species that are reduced to a single “the animal.” Derrida finds that distinction, or versions of it, surfacing in thinkers as far apart as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Lacan, and Levinas, and he dedicates extended analyses to the question in the work of each of them. The book’s autobiographical theme intersects with its philosophical analysis through the figures of looking and nakedness, staged in terms of Derrida’s experience when his cat follows him into the bathroom in the morning. In a classic deconstructive reversal, Derrida asks what this animal sees and thinks when it sees this naked man. Yet the experiences of nakedness and shame also lead all the way back into the mythologies of “man’s dominion over the beasts” and trace a history of how man has systematically displaced onto the animal his own failings or bêtises. The Animal That Therefore I Am is at times a militant plea and indictment regarding, especially, the modern industrialized treatment of animals. However, Derrida cannot subscribe to a simplistic version of animal rights that fails to follow through, in all its implications, the questions and definitions of “life” to which he returned in much of his later work. |
Términos y frases comunes
abyss according Adorno Animal Rights animal-machine animot anthropocentrism Aristotle asking autobiographical animal beast beginning Bellerophon bête calls the animal Cartesian chimera cogito cogito ergo sum concept concerning consciousness Dasein death deprived Descartes difference disavowal discourse Discourse on Method Écrits Elohim Emmanuel Levinas erase especially essence ethics everything evil example face fact finitude French gaze Genesis going Heidegger Heidegger's human ibid italics Jacques Derrida Jacques Lacan Kant Kantian Lacan language living creature logic logos looks means metaphysical metonymy mirror mirror stage modesty naked nakedness never nonresponse nudity one’s oneself philosophical possibility precisely pretense of pretense problematic question reason recognize reference refused the animal relation remains René Descartes response seems seminar sense serpent sexual shame signifier signs simply singular speak specular speech thing trace tracks tradition trans translation truth unconscious University Press whole William McNeill word