L'animale che dunque sono

by Jacques Derrida

"L'animale ci guarda e noi siamo nudi davanti a lui. E pensare comincia forse proprio qui". Cosa comincia? Comincia il senso dell'alterità, noi siamo altro dall'animale, ma altro da come noi stessi ci siamo ridotti. Ridotti ad esigenze, bisogni, prospettive piccole, meschine, carrieriste, violente nella loro piccolezza, egoiste. L'animale, la sua diversità ci obbliga a ricominciare ad essere uomini. Il discorso di Derrida è interrotto, ma è una seria appassionante strada aperta.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Animals, Essays, France, Politics

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Owlseyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Man is a promising animal"
F. Nietzsche



“So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds”
In: The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin



"And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him." Genesis 2:20



Derrida contends that the philosophical tradition (since Aristotle to Heidegger; from Descartes to Kant, Levinas and Lacan) has mistreated animals. Even the word "animal" (a pseudo, violent concept) presupposes a homogeneity which Derrida doubts about. So he coins another word: "animot".



“When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.”
Michel de Montaigne

The book starts with a reflection on the distinction between man's natural state of nakedness needing coverage and Derrida's cat, which needs not. Shame and modesty obliges, for man. Not for the cat, or the other animals. And throughout the book, the cat's presence is recurring, so are questions like these:

"It's been a long time! It is as if the cat woke up, as if he would recall me without saying a word the terrible account of Genesis . Who was born first, before man? who saw the other arriving in those places long time ago? who was the first occupier, and therefore the master? the subject? who keeps being the despot it's been so long? ".

"Is there an animal narcissism? But, can't that cat be, also, from the bottom of his eyes, my first mirror? "

Yes, animals don't speak, or reply; yet,"do they dream? ... laugh,... cry,... sing, ...forgive...?"

But then, back to the Genesis, the Serpent (the most astute of the animals) in the Garden of Eden did speak; and then, there was the original-sin story.

ἄνθρωπον λόγοϛ ἔχων

"Thought is an attribute which belongs to me: it's the only one which cannot be separated from me. I AM, I EXIST, that is for sure, however for how long? to be known, as long as the time my thought lasts"
René Descartes in: Meditationes de prima philosophia

Derrida simply decimates [my expression] Descartes view on animals. The French philosopher considered two criteria for distinguishing the True from the False, or in other terms, the human from the “automaton”: (1) the absence of reply (2) “the deficit” (typical in animals) which explained humans “superiority”. For several times, Derrida invokes one detail not considered thus far: the “look” from the animal. He goes further: analyzing the Universal declaration of the rights of the animals, even, “the juridical personality of animals”. (Poor Descartes!). The, thus far, “zoon logon echon” (man, the rational animal) must be considerate as to the other’s viewpoint, the animal's animals'. Ergo: Animals are not “automatons”.



The last chapter of the book, approaches, in a very critical way, the Heideggerian view on what I would call the "animality" of animals, [Das wesen der tierheit des tieres] which Heidegger tried to define what its essence is.

Derrida sees contradictions in Heidegger's thought. Sure, Heidegger saw in man's essence both consciousness and language, of which all animals are deprived of, so says a long tradition of philosophers since Aristotle. And yet, cats and other animals, do sleep, but is the content of their dreams like man's? How about plants? Derrida's view ends up in a question: (though animals live with us) do they exist? (in the same meaning "existence" has for man). His answer seems to be negative.

Interestingly enough, that Derrida mentioned the (Genesis) Adam's task of naming the animals, even before the creation of woman. Also, the Elohim's injunction that all animals become under "submission"; under man. Any creationist, would argue with Derrida, that, though man's nature includes "animality", it should be kept under submission.

UPDATE

(If you like Derrida, don't look at the next joke)
<"


I know you looked into

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Derrida goes, an enjoyable, only partly maddening read. Warning, you will hear a lot about Derrida walking around naked. If you can handle the mental image of that, you will be fine.

[Ian Scuffling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a beyond introductory-level (but not much beyond) working knowledge of Heidegger, Lacan, Descartes, and Derrida's style of deconstruction--that said, this was pretty dense and demanding. This book is a further deconstruction on the meaning of existence by complicating the mix with the addition of pointing out the problems of the human-animal binary. Once opened up, Derrida is able to give a critical look into the mythological, biological, ontological, historiographical relationships between man and all other living creatures on earth.

I found my way to this book in my reading of Hades, where one of the primary characters is doing a critical psychoanalytic paper on human/animal relationships, and she's using this as a primary research text. It's clear to see why Danielewski has included it in his meta-textual post-modern work, particularly in his most meta-textual character. Particularly at stake in that novel is the young girl Xanther and her newly-found kitten and their intrinsically supernatural "familiar" relationship. As metaphysical boundaries are tested, the nature of human/animal relationships are questioned, and the power/effect of one on the other has actualized ramifications in the novel--a kind of realized form of some of the ideas going on in Derrida's text here.

A more-versed reader of philosophy and Derrida would surely get much more out of this than I could--I would say about 7% seeped into the skull's jelly. Derrida's recursive style just confounds me sometimes. Perhaps revisiting later on in my Familiar journey may formalize some of what's going on here? Still enjoyed what it did to my neurons though.

[Derek Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Derrida at his best. Beautiful, rigorous, brutal reading.

[Nicholas R. Cabezas]

I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy…

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read some of the essays in here for school. but I'd recommend it to anyone who loves animals and knows how much smarter they are than people. It makes you think hard about the what we consider to be the difference between humans and animals, and whether or not you should feel embarrassed to be naked in front of your pet.

[Pavlogreen]

Gran ajuste de cuentas de Derrida con el antropocentrismo de la tradición filosófica europea. Desde la premisa de que a los animales se les ha negado siempre la posibilidad de respuesta Derrida explora con contundencia las deficiencias teóricas en relación con el reino animal de Descartes, Kant, Levinas, Lacan y Heidegger. Aunque sigue siendo un texto muy filosófico y bastante desapegado de la zoología, es un buen primer paso para romper las barreras que la filosofía ha construido entre el ser humano y los demás animales.

[Jishnu Guha · Rating 5 out of 5]

tbh probably a 4 or 4.5 but I was pretty excited at there being a Derrida book where I could say I grasped what was going on

[Fede]

Kirja jää kesken, siksi en anna sille tähtiä. Laina-aika ei riittänyt. Tuskin palaan siihen kovin pian. Kerron siksi, mitä hieman yli puoliväliin ehdittyäni ajattelen.

Asetelma on hyvin kiinnostava. On selvää, että eläimen käsitteeseen liittyy länsimaisessa ajattelussa tietynlainen kirjoittamaton, mutta yleisesti hyväksytty paradigma. Täman paradigman Derrida osuvasti haastaa. Kun haasteeseen liittyy selkeä eettinen kannanotto, on lopputulos vaikuttava. Monelle kohdalle tulee myös naurettua; Derrida osaa älykkäällä tavalla vitsailla.

Kirja tosiaan silti jää minulta kesken. Se on luotu mukaillen Derridan vuonna 1997 pitämää kymmentuntista "luentoa" ja myöhemmin 2003 julkaisemaa kirjoitelmaa samasta aiheesta. En ole Derridalta lukenut mitään muuta, joten en pysty tätä teosta vertaamaan hänen muuhun tuotantoonsa. Joka tapauksessa kenties kirjan lähdemateriaalista johtuen sen lukeminen on raskasta ja vaatii intensiivistä keskittymistä. Derridan ajatus kulkee paikoin viivytellen ja toisaalla hyvin nopeasti. En usein pystynyt lukemaan kerralla kuin muutaman sivun. Lukuja kirjassa ei ole lähes lainkaan, jolloin lukijalle jää harvoin paikka koota yhteen lukemaansa tai ikäänkuin hengähtää. Pian huomasinkin, että minun oli erikseen patistettava itseäni tarttumaan kirjaan ja jatkamaan sitä. Lopulta totesin, etten halua näin itseäni nyt kiusata ja annoin kirjan jäädä.

Kirjan aihe on erittäin tärkeä ja aina ajankohtainen. Suosittelen sitä, mutta sen lukeminen tuskin onnistuu ilman ripausta itsekuria.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had hoped this text would primarily explore our embodiment as creatures and the incarnational context of all knowledge. Instead, Derrida sharpened the same stick he'd been whittling away at his whole career, namely an attack on the rationalistic tradition of "phallogocentrism" (as typified here in Descartes' "I think" and Descartes'/Aristotle's view of animals as automatons). More than in any other work of Derrida's, he achieved his interrogation through a circling, spinning, spiraling motion, repeating and mutating himself in a way which embodies his notion of "iterability" from his other work. He especially fixated on the things which supposedly differentiate humans from animals, namely our nakedness, our intellect, and our language.

The first image he chose to illustrate his criticism was that of being viewed, nakedly, by an animal, for example, a pet cat. The cat's gaze is a certain kind of gaze to Derrida, a gaze of the Other, a silent reply, that is, one not speaking a logos-language we're used to. Nakedness has a long history in human culture; this might sound like a stupid and self-evident statement, but it goes back to our founding, what with Adam and Eve, and also back to another founding in the enlightenment and even as far back as the Greeks, namely of figuring "truth" as "naked" and "falsity" as "clothed." However, quoting Heidegger near the end of the book: "This deception, this being deceptive that belongs to the essence of the logos—this proffering of something as something it is not—this pretending, with respect to whatever the deception is about, is a concealing." Thus, the same question asked by Nietzsche (in "Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense") and every nominalist before and after Ockham.

It's a bitter irony: that Derrida, far from being some boogeyman against "The West" (or whatever Jordan Peterson calls him), is actually extremely concerned with truth, and with all the values that The West holds dear. Derrida wants to interrogate, to "deconstruct", not to destroy, as many of his critics claim. He wants to take apart to see the constituent parts, not merely tear apart and leave it in a heap. Working in reverse from the end of the book (because why not), Derrida points out three major traumas which have shaken "phallogocentrism" to the core: First, the Copernican (the earth revolves around the sun), Second, the Darwinian (humans are just complex monkeys), Third, the Freudian ("the decentering of consciousness under the gaze of the unconscious"). Derrida thus arrives at the nervous nexus of these three traumas, the venn diagram of all three, ultimately asking "whether what calls itself human has the right rigorously to attribute to man, which means therefore to attribute to himself, what he refuses the animal, and whether he can ever possess the pure, rigorous, indivisible concept, as such, of that attribution."

In other words, what makes us gods over all the animals, to simplify them to non-human, and divinize ourselves as something exceptional? This question is one logical conclusion of his prioritization of the margins over the norms, but I'm not sure what exactly it achieves other than total coverage. He points out early on in the text how "victims of historic catastrophes have in fact felt animals to be victims also, comparable up to a certain point to themselves and their kind." In other words, he shows his hand here; or rather, the hand of all the marginalized he represents. In other words, as I wrote in my journal this morning, "pathology is passion;" in other words, trauma is an engine. In other words, the "catastrophes" or "traumas" that Derrida describes (genocides, factory farming, Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, etc.) are where he finds the most anxiety, and thus the most meaning, the most energy to write, to explore. He's like an over-zealous surgeon digging in the wound looking for the bullet.

On one level, I understand where he is going in this text, and I even appreciate how he finds places of tension and dives right in instead of shying away like many do (who define anxiety away under the guise of "cogito ergo sum" or some other anthropocentrism). But I fear that he creates just as comfortable a hammock in these gaps as those who ignore or cover them up. As I just mentioned in my Entangling Vines review about Zen Buddhist Koans, Derrida, despite all his posturing, still shares many of the same goals as those he criticizes. Whether he intends to or not, he maintains a certain linearity and, in his words, a logo-centrism. Sure, he spirals out, but like a spring spinning in a given direction, one which timidly defends a presupposed political program. He lacks entirely the dynamite of Nietzsche, the one honest man, I fear, who is willing to kill all gods and say what's impossible to say aloud.

Derrida at one point hints toward this fearless exploration, asking "Why could one not speak of an animal philosophy?" As "Metaphors We Live By" points out, so many of our concepts are embodied metaphors, and had our world or biology been different, we might have totally different ways of thinking or representing things. For example, depending on the fish or the bird, many things might be inverted, or so thoroughly subverted that there is no clear up and down, but maybe something more like north and south, shallow and deep, light and dark, warm and cold, etc. It's interesting to imagine, but Derrida doesn't explore that much at all.

To be sure, I'd happily agree with Derrida that Descartes commits a mortal sin when "in one blow, to economize, to save time, he eliminates everything that isn't 'certain and indubitable;'" for in that move he sums up the entirety of the modern worldview, and the heresy thereof. I think that the post-modern, of which Derrida is chronologically if not philosophically a part, and the premodern, of which I am not chronologically but at least in attitude a member, often overlap quite significantly. The more I read and write and think, the more I'm disturbed by the modernization of the Church; not the slight doctrinal or aesthetic changes before or since the Reformation, but the changes that have happened under the hood in terms of emphasis, culminating in an almost gnostic hyper-focus on ascertaining the one correct formulation of belief (justification/salvation), and leaving all the rest to the buzzards. Lately I'm much more interested in orthopraxy than orthodoxy; Descartes, however, completely precludes the former when he focuses exclusively on the latter. In other words, when all we have is the Letter, the Spirit doesn't have a chance to "give life." In other words, Derrida attacks our tradition at its weakest point: its most literal, technical side. This is why his usual tactic is to interrogate specific quotes, sometimes even a specific word, needling at it until the assumptions become more evident, and what originally felt self-evident is now up for debate.

He does this when he points out slight differences in Descartes' text when he translated it out of the original Latin into French, where he adds some additional clarifying remarks. He finds those anxieties about miscommunication and clarity often pooled around the issue of certainty and certain starting assumptions about humans. Similarly, I feel like so much of what people debate these days centers around an unexplored egotism, that traumatized engine which fuels so many ignorant people speaking boldly about that which they don't understand. Everyone "secretly exempts [themselves]" from the need to be self-critical, to stringently vet one's "allies." For in truth, we irresistibly tend to fall back into the comfortable cliche of taking at face value that which props up our "side" (or more accurately, which strokes our ego). Thus, Derrida's text is a healthy thing for us anthropocentric thinkers to consider.

However, a supreme irony exists here: why doesn't Derrida turn this critical gaze back in on himself? Why does he secretly exempt himself? Simply because he has rejected some lazy assumptions? Yet even he, were he honest, has his own fair share of assumptions which he defends like a mama bear, especially later on in Limited Inc. His is often a simple ideological inversion, a privileging of the margin over the norm, as I highlighted at the start. At the start of "The Animal That...", he shifts from what is "certain" (Descartes' 'cogito') to what is "undeniable" (that animals suffer). It isn't self-evident how to interpret this suffering, however. Given how Christianity complicates suffering (i.e., it isn't a straightforward bad thing, good can come from it, it can make you a better person, etc.), the vegan conclusion is far from self-evident. I've met more than my fair share of vegitarians who arrived at their position because of "ew", the same stupid argument that secular people had against homosexuality or transgenderism before 2014. But "ew" is not an argument.

The Christian argument normally has been wrapped up in "confession" (of sins, of faith) as Derrida points out; it is an endless reflection upon who and what we are and what we've done, resulting in an autobiographizing we incessantly indulge in. He ties together the act of "confession" with the "naming" done by Adam in the garden: "the wound without a name: that of having been given a name." I think a way to sum up Derrida's argument is that all these (male) philosophers have "themselves...never been looked at, and especially not naked, by an animal that addressed them." Thus, the 'feminine' gender, the one that dresses and poses for a gaze, is also the Animal, the Other, the recipient of a name, not the giver of the name. The 'masculine,' is thus a human, philosopher, name-giver, poet, priest, king; his worldview is one built upon the act of looking, speaking, acting in the world. He forgets about the Other once he names it and creates a comfortable distance between him and it. As he writes earlier, "They have taken no account of the fact that what they call ‘‘animal’’ could look at them, and address them from down there, from a wholly other origin." As I wrote earlier in my review, thus the fish or bird epistemologies.

The animal-other then becomes a type of the marginalized, a primal and primary example of exclusion and over-looking that is deeply rooted in western philosophy. "In the first place there are texts signed by people who have no doubt seen, observed, analyzed, reflected on the animal, but who have never been seen seen by the animal." As he writes quite poetically: And in these moments of nakedness, as regards the animal, everything can happen to me, I am like a child ready for the apocalypse, I am (following) the apocalypse itself, that is to say, the ultimate and first event of the end, the unveiling and the verdict. I am (following) it, the apocalypse, I identify with it by running behind it, after it, after its whole zoo-logy


Thus putting ourselves, nakedly, vulnerably, in the position of the animal, the other, the observed but not understood, the named but mysterious, the tamed but segregated, we can start to learn about our blind spots. This isn't even the start of understanding an animal epistemology; rather, it's an indictment of the ways we dehumanize humans who don't fit our comfortable cliches. He writes "The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there." The reason this makes sense is that, in the moment we lock eyes with the Animal, the Other, we must grapple with the fact of their independence; we learn in a flash that we are not God. There are things (such as them) which are far outside of our control, likely outside of our comprehension, things that experience the world similarly enough to interact with, but differently enough so as to disturb our usual assumptions. Animals disturb us first because they are comfortably naked, and second because our human masks don't work on them; we spend all our time curating and posing, but that all falls to pieces under the gaze of the animal-other. We experience those two kinds of nudity simultaneously: "Nudity is nothing other than that passivity, the involuntary exhibition of the self."

Clothed as our thoughts and actions are in words, we fear such an absolute exhibition, always preferring a comfortable gap, a couple feet between us and the person we're talking to. But Derrida complicates this discourse we're so used to: "In any case, isn’t Alice’s credulity rather incredible? She seems, at this moment at least, to believe that one can in fact discern and decide between a human yes and no." Animals, by contrast, have a very direct, immediate, relationship with "truth," which to them is a simple life-or-death; in other words, even when they play dead, they don't know how to lie. Humans are so complex so as to have an almost infinite number of layers of meaning between each other, even when we say something so simple as "yes" or "no." Sarcasm? Irony? Bitterness? Contempt? Pretending? Pretension? Who is to tell. That's why I argued in my Master's defense about the centrality of faith, that language requires faith, that the gaps between each other, between us and words, between words themselves, must be bridged by certain idealistic assumptions, unprovable, yes, but distinctly human.

[Karl Steel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I'm going to use my review to promote my own work on animals and posthumanism. See my "How to Make a Human," Exemplaria 20.1 (2008): 3-27 (available here): my own work would have been impossible without Derrida. Non-medievalists will be most interested in the first 10 pages or so.

Anyone following Derrida's work on animals (in translation) is already familiar with the title essay and his takedown of Lacan (where Derrida puts under question the distinctions between reaction and response and feigning and the (purportedly uniquely human capacity of) feigning to feign). Now, however, you have JD's work on animals in Descartes, Kant, Adorno (who gets a gold star here: if JD had had time to develop it, so would Nietzsche, Kafka, and Montaigne), and Levinas. And, as a special bonus, a transcription of JD's extempore remarks on Heidegger and the animal. These remarks are heartbreaking, as they're full of asides on the lines of "since we have just 10 minutes" and "I'll do it, I hope, if I have the time and the strength." He would live for another 10 years, but that hope remained unfulfilled.

At the same time, the very presentness of his remarks, his apologies for keeping people from their dinner, keeps his thought here, perhaps more than anywhere else, in the moment, contingent, freed from the pretension of speaking from a place of Truth. He takes Heidegger down for, among other things, a lack of phenomenological rigor, whereas there is no moment in Derrida that I know (which isn't very far) where he is more mitsein (can I do that?) his topic, his audience, and even his readers, whose own dinners are suspended for a time while Derrida speaks, and wonders, once again.

[Tuomas Aitonurmi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taas ranskalaista filosofiaa luettuna! Tällä kertaa teki mieli vaan kirjoittaa, että ”Luin tämän.” ja ottaa muutama sitaatti eikä mitään sen enempää. Mutta ilokseni huomasin lukemisen loppumetreillä tekstitiedostosta, että olen saanut kirjoitettua asioita ylös enemmänkin! Rakastan sitä, kun kirjoitan ikään kuin salaa itseltäni ja unohdan niin tehneeni. Eli: Kannattaako puhua ”eläimistä” ikään kuin ihminen ei olisi itse ”eläin”? Osaako ”eläin” vastata ihmiselle? Mikä merkitys tällä vastaamisella on? Miksi ”siis”-sana otsikossa onkin merkityksellisempi kuin ensin ajattelisi? Näihin Derrida pyrkii vastaamaan, mutta ymmärränkö vastauksia, vai onko kyse ajattelun prosessista, joka jatkuu esseemäisellä tavalla lukijan päässä? Ajatus on armollinen, suon sen itselleni. Vetäydyn jatkamaan ajattelua eläimenä, joka kykenee tällaiseen itsensä ilmaisemiseen. Olenhan omaelämäkerrallinen eläin. Luulen siis, että olen. Ihminen on eläin, kissa on eläin.

”Mikään ei voisi koskaan viedä minulta varmuutta siitä, että olemassaolossaan se [kissa] uhmaa kaikkia käsitteitämme. Ja että se on kuolevainen, sillä niin pian kuin sillä on nimi, sen nimi on elävä sitä kauemmin.” (s. 25)

”’Minä’: sanoessaan ’minä’ omaelämäkerran kirjoittaja on osoittavinaan itseään sormella, esittäytyvinään nykyhetkessä – – alastomassa totuudessaan. – – Panen alastomuuteni häpeilemättä pantiksi, hän sanoo nimetessään itsensä ja vastatessaan nimestään.” (s. 77)

”Hän tajuaa vertailevan tarkastelunsa kehämäisyyden ja huomaa kehän aiheuttavan huimausta.” (s. 213)

[Mark Ciesluk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately the title of this book proved to be the most memorable aspect, but the thoughts contained within dovetail nicely with my own musings on the issue of man consciously and categorically alienating himself from the natural world in order to assert an untenable superiority over the rest of existence.

[Jude Lee-Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this so interesting but had to work very very hard to make it comprehensible !!

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

I sort of scanned thru this for an essay toward the end of 2022 but didn't feel it qualified for a read. There's an extraordinary pathos to this one , which swings toward a knowingness of it being the last of his books, and projection into the future, further avenues that could have been explored. Appropriately, the text is shortened by the fact that the lecture ran overtime & he had to wrap up quickly.

derrida was famously inspired by this one when he walked out the shower nakey (I have heard while on the loo?), and was confronted by his cat . he also describes having sex while the cat (presumably the same one) spectates

Now this self, this male me, believes he has noted that the presence of a woman in the room warms things up in the relation to the cat, vis-à-vis the gaze of the naked cat that sees me naked, and sees me see it seeing me naked, like a shining fire with a cloud of jealousy that begins to float like the smoke of incense in the room.

the big coinage for this one is animot, a charming little play. but be VERY alert to the other work happening with suis/suivre. - Que suis-je? (who am I (following)?)

anyway memes aside this is a brilliant little book & a robust work of theory, entirely worthwhile. The confrontation with descartes is habitually rigorous but the surprise cld be in Derrida's treatment of heidegger here, drawing out the hidden cartesian foundations of his project, surprise esp seeing as onkel martin is seen as The central figure in D's work.

As with every bottomless gaze, as with the eyes of the other, the gaze called "animal" offers to my sight the abyssal limit of the human: the inhuman or the ahuman, the ends of man, that is to say, the bordercrossing from which vantage man dares to announce himself to himself, thereby calling himself by the name that he believes he gives himself.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

No crec que em pugui acostumar mai a l'escriptura rocambolesca de Derrida: en poques paraules, es podria dir que no suporto la constant repetició, l'espiral interminable que sembla traçar en cada argument. I tot i això, el text era bo -bo, per a mi, és aquell text que ensenya i fa pensar. He apreciat especialmet la reconstrucció moderna del pensament sobre l'animal com a carència d'una mena o altra -logocentrisme- i l'estudi de Descartes, Kant i Lévinas, no tant el de Lacan.

[Els · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai aimé le ton et le propos mais je pense que je retiendrai surtout le ton, malheureusement.
Je vais essayer de le feuilleter encore pour essayer de fixer des choses mais c'est toujours plus compliqué que j'aimerais.

Les deux premières parties qui sont vraiment la conférence préparée par D sont intéressantes, j'aime comme il parle de l'animal et de son altérité.
La partie sur Lacan m'a dépassée. J'ai l'impression qu'à chaque fois qu'un auteur parle de Lacan de toute façon, c'est pour dire qu'il est trop bête. :) :)

La critique de chaque philosophe (Descartes, Kant, Levinas, Heidegger) serait sans doute plus enrichissante en connaissant qui ils sont et ce qu'ils disent en dehors de ça, mais est quand même assez bien introduite pour arriver à suivre et à en tirer des choses (pas seulement qu'ils sont trop bêtes, mais, disons-le, aussi ça).

Ce qui m'a amusé, c'est les parallèles que j'ai trouvé avec la littérature sur le genre (sur la définition de l'Autre, l'autocentrisme des penseurs (mâles&blancs en plus d'être des humains!)). C'est toujours bien de se décentrer.

[Wythe Marschall · Rating 3 out of 5]

The man's my hero, but his later work is falling flat...

No offense to other Derrida-heads out there who love this particular text, but I mostly took away from it: "I am no old man who sure does wuv his kittywitty!!1!" Which is endearing but kind of, you know, a let-down, coming from the man who reinvented how we view language, politics, truth, the gift, death, and ourselves.

Still, I feel better writing about monsters (esp. chimerae, a la Asma; esp.-esp. werewolves) having read this. We are animals; we do not think of ourselves as animals. Highlighting that simple disconnect is perhaps worthy of a Derrida jam, even if said jam is no Of Grammatology.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Derrida. So, super confusing, very wordy, but the ideas are, of course, present and thriving. Completely awesome analysis of the animal within, or, the animal that we are. Lack of non-male and non-whiteness present in text, however.

[Johnna Gurgel · Rating 2 out of 5]

- Premise is intriguing considering having read "When Elephants Weep"
- Language and play with language is so convoluted; adds to deconstruction element of Derrida but for a traditional semi-interested reader the prose is THICK

[Christine Cordula Dantas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't waste your time and money. It's impossible to understand this book, because there is nothing to understand.

[Meg Lebow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea what just happened but I think it was probably very clever?

[Axel Leplae]

Essay teachers: 'Write your essay in a structured and comprehensible manner, sticking to the essential arguments that concisely strengthen your thesis.'

Jacques: 'Non.'

[Egg]

DNF

I bet it's great, but I'm not understanding a single word he's writing, so it doesn't make sense to continue.
Maybe one day when my brain is bigger.

[George Knighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling quite ill at the moment but I really had to use a lot of brain power to get through this. It felt rather … heavy. I think the hardest part of understanding this book is getting used to the prose. Due to it being a transcript you have to really fish through the language to understand what Derrida is trying to say.

This book is somewhat affectionate of the role that animals have played in Derrida’s work, yet it is more focused on critiquing the relegation of animal life that takes place as a direct result of grouping all non-human animal life under the term ‘animal’ and distinguishing them as different to man. Going back to genesis and looking at the animal throughout time.

There is almost a sense of pleading with his audience regarding the modern industrialised treatment of animals, but Derrida being Derrida cannot simply prescribe a simple version of animal rights within his work.

[Gabby R · Rating 3 out of 5]

As expected, this is a challenging read. Although, considering the basis of these ideas and theories stem from his experience standing there naked in front of his cat, I was somewhat entertained. I didn’t need to read in detail through the whole text to get what I needed or the gist of his ideas about animality… This was more background reading for me. I’ll revisit it if I need to, but I would recommend this to anyone in critical theory or animal studies. It’s worth trying to grasp the main ideas.

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crítica fundamental al antropocentrismo implícito en el concepto informe de "lo animal". Derrida deconstruye las fantasías, ficciones y delirios humanos al respecto mostrando, una vez más, la profundidad de su filosofía.

Completese con la lectura de "Lo abierto y lo animal" de Giorgio Agamben (para ir abriendo boca), "Filosofía de la animalidad" de Felice Cimatti (para profundizar en la tesis de Derrida) y "El ser humano como animal" de Markus Gabriel.

[نور الهدى]

Passing across borders or the ends of man I come or surrender to the animal, to the animal in itself, to the animal in me and the animal at unease with itself, to the man about whom Nietzsche said (I no longer remember where) something to the effect that it was an as yet undetermined animal, an animal lacking in itself.

The animal That Therfore I Am
Jacques Derrida

[Tom Caskie]

Didn't read this whole thing, but I read the titular essay. Love the message/overarching argument, he tends to go ona. bit though jesus christ. Hungover trying to plough through 50 pages of digressions to get this assignment done isn't what I want to be doing on a Friday night.

[Molly Labenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

My brain hurts.