Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction

by Matthew Calarco

The rapidly expanding field of critical animal studies now offers a myriad of theoretical and philosophical positions from which to choose. This timely book provides an overview and analysis of the most influential of these trends. Approachable and concise, it is intended for readers sympathetic to the project of changing our ways of thinking about and interacting with animals yet relatively new to the variety of philosophical ideas and figures in the discipline. It uses three rubrics―identity, difference, and indistinction―to differentiate three major paths of thought about animals. The identity approach aims to establish continuity among human beings and animals so as to grant animals equal access to the ethical and political community. The difference framework views the animal world as containing its own richly complex and differentiated modes of existence in order to allow for a more expansive ethical and political worldview. The indistinction approach argues that we should abandon the notion that humans are unique in order to explore new ways of conceiving human-animal relations. Each approach is interrogated for its relative strengths and weaknesses, with specific emphasis placed on the kinds of transformational potential it contains.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Animals

88 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 2015

About the author

Matthew Calarco is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University Fullerton, USA.

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid primer for thinking about our relation to animals.

"What a thought of indistinction ultimately creates is space for us to think about the field of human beings and animals in new ways—and this effectively means uncovering new kinds of identities and differences. So, rather than blocking thought or conceptual work entirely, pursuing a thought of indistinction is aimed at creating the conditions for other modes of thought—different ontologies and different practices—to emerge. The chief difference here is that thinking about the field of human beings and animals no longer takes its point of departure either from attempts to extend traditional human traits to animals (the identity approach) or from efforts aimed at complicating and multiplying anthropological differences (the difference approach). Instead, the indistinction approach aims to think about human beings and animals in deeply relational terms that permit new groupings and new differences to emerge, such that “the human” is no longer the center or chief point of reference."

[susan haris · Rating 4 out of 5]

very useful to get a rough idea and to trace the evolution of thought of thinking about animals.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calarco's introduction to animal studies provides a practical evaluation of the dominant theoretical and academic approaches to the "animal question." While the text is mainly aimed at activists who are unfamiliar with theory, it also offers a solid foundation for undergraduates or academics who are new to the field. Animal studies scholars, however, will be acquainted with most of the material.

The main innovation Calarco provides is his division of the field into the three titular rubrics: thinkers of identity like Singer or Regan propose similarities between animals and humans as a basis for ethics, while the difference approach, exemplified mainly by deconstruction, takes radical alterity as its point of departure. The third approach, and the one Calarco identifies with most clearly, is indistinction. Represented by Haraway, Deleuze and Plumwood, this way of thinking rejects the directionality of the first approach as well as the division proposed by the second. Attempting to think beyond the anthropological difference, its proponents consider not how some animals are like humans, but what humans have in common with other animals.
This trifold division comprises the most problematic aspect of the book. While the identity category remains relatively stable, difference and indistinction begin to bleed together when considered more critically. The claim that Derrida insists on the anthropological difference, for example, is founded on a specific reading of one passage from "Violence towards Animals," which can just as well be understood as a hesitation to foreclose any unanticipated forms of thought. Moreover, Derrida maintains kinship within difference, as well, as he repeatedly stresses the mortality that binds humans and other animals together. This emphasis on finitude seems to place him much closer to Plumwood than Calarco suggests. However, the problematic relationship between these two categories can be read as a Heideggerian Holzweg, as it contains especially rich potential for future considerations of difference and similarity within and beyond the field.

The most fruitful aspect of Calarco's book is his insistence that his readers "inhabit" each of the positions he articulates in order to develop new paradigms of thinking and living with animals. Such openness is at the core of animal studies as a field; therefore, Calarco's emphasis on it will benefit new readers as well as serve as a useful reminder for scholars who are familiar with the field.

[Nick Ziegler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone interested in any sort of philosophy should read this book, but I also think it should be assigned for general introduction to philosophy courses. Not only is animal studies au courant, making a toe dip a fitting capstone to an introduction to the discipline, but it is a particularly illuminating field of study. Calarco shows with laudable clarity, requiring a minimum of background, how the question of the animal is one with deep philosophical as well as political stakes, one that requires both a virtuosic reading of the philosophical tradition and engagement with present science and social movements. Both the political stakes of philosophy, and the hermeneutic task of generational reengagement with the canon, are sometimes lost when philosophical "introductions" are reduced to a series of logical and epistemological moves geared to refuting some posited skeptic (zombie David Hume?). Though, if that's how you teach your course you're probably not looking at this book.

Bridges logocentric anglo-American ethics (Singer, Regan et al.) and "continental" theory. The final chapter, more tentative and less clear (with the author's explicit apology, as what he calls 'indistinction' is still in the process of achieving its distinction), is more polemical and political, as befitting its claim to be more grassroots/political/disruptive-on-the-ground.

But the book, as I've said, doesn't just achieve its stated purpose; the paragraphs which deal with issues like antihumanism (yeah, my heart is with the middle chapter) are excellent introductions to ideas pulled from difficult corpuses (Heidegger, Derrida, oh my), and would allow novices to get inside these ideas, see how they fit. And since the philosophical tradition has chronically defined the human in contradistinction to the animal, this tour is neither marginal nor of specialist interest: the question of the animal gets to the very meaty marrow of this human enterprise of philosophy.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calarco's book perfectly achieves its goal of introducing students and emerging scholars to the study of animals, primarily in the field of philosophy. I'm not sure whether this would be the kind of resource one might cite, however, because the book's length is as much of a pro as it is a con. Calarco doesn't go as in depth as I hoped he would, nor does he list that many people in the field, although if you're looking for the main people then "Thinking Through Animals" covers them. Especially helpful is Calarco's way of distinguishing between the three different types of approaches in the field - those whose ideas center around the question of identity, those who focus on difference, and those theorists who instead push the indistinction approach - as one can easily make a kind of chart and then slot in future scholars and theorists into the appropriate category based on Calarco's comprehensive definitions.

[kulisap · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me three days to finish despite being only 90 pages long for this was a highly stimulating, and immensely thought-provoking primer on ethical/philosophical frameworks surrounding animal-human relations.

it was very academic, and as someone who hasn't been to school for six years now, my brain is quite rusty in this linguistic (?) arena, but i did quite comprehend a bunch of ideas and insights the author wanted to convey and i'm surely gonna be thinking of this book often as i venture into more books about animal rights and animal liberation.

i want to reread this sometime later, but man, i have so much on my immediate tbr

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might expound on some perspective-shifting theories and ways of thinking posited in here when i find the brainpower to make a review for booksta

[Melvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant survey of the main philosophical approaches in critical animal studies. Super easy to read.