The Animal That Therefore I Am
The Animal That Therefore I Am (
Publication
The address was first partially published in English in the Winter 2002 issue of the journal Critical Inquiry. In 2008 it was republished in a book entitled The Animal That Therefore I Am, which reprinted the address along with an essay entitled 'And Say The Animal Responded', and two previously unpublished essays. All of the essays were taken from Derrida's various addresses at the 1997 Cerisy conference.[3]
Critical responses
Tobias Menely suggests that "Derrida is straining after something that is unusually difficult for him to conceptualize", namely the question of pathos that binds the human and nonhuman animal. Menely, in his analysis of Derrida's argument, positions Derrida in a tradition of thinkers that include Thomas More and Jeremy Bentham who, according to Menely, elide the question of the ways in which suffering might be equivocal between species and instead turn to "creaturely passion" for an account of animal ontology.[4]
Donna Haraway in When Species Meet praises Derrida for understanding "that actual animals look back at actual human beings", yet, crucially does not "seriously consider an alternative form of knowing something more about cats and how to look back, perhaps even scientifically, biologically, and therefore also philosophically and intimately." Although largely complimentary of his attempt to address the question of the animal, Haraway surmises that Derrida "failed a simple obligation of companionship" to the specific animal other.[5]
Derrida and the animal
As Derrida himself notes, the question of the animal and animality has been a concern within his writing long before the 1997 Cerisy Conference. Most notably, Derrida talks about the animality of the letter in Writing and Difference (1967), Heidegger's pronouncement on the animal being "poor in world" in Of Spirit (1989) and, in an interview with Jean-Luc Nancy entitled "Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject" (1989), Derrida discusses the ethics of eating meat. Derrida's final seminars, from 2001 to 2003, extensively discuss animals and animality, and were posthumously published in two volumes under the title The Beast and the Sovereign.
In film
In an early scene from Michael Mann's 2015 action thriller Blackhat, The Animal That Therefore I Am can be seen on the prison-cell bookshelf of protagonist Nicholas Hathaway, a convicted hacker played by Chris Hemsworth.[7]
See also
- Narrative identity – Psychological theory
- Cogito ergo sum– Philosophical statement made by René Descartes
- Zoopoetics
Notes
- ^ Ryan 2015, pp. 13–15.
- ^ Derrida 2011, p. 15.
- ^ Derrida 2008.
- ^ Ryan 2015, pp. 40–41.
- ^ Haraway 2008, pp. 19–20.
- ^ Willems 2018.
- ^ Schwartz 2018, pp. 92–93.
References
- ISBN 978-0-8232-2791-4.
- ——— (2011). The Beast And The Sovereign, Volume I. Chicago: ISBN 978-0-226-14429-0.
- ISBN 978-0-8166-5046-0.
- Menely, Tobias (2015). The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice. Chicago: ISBN 978-0-226-23939-2.
- Ryan, Derek (2015). Animal Theory. Edinburgh: ISBN 978-0-7486-8219-5.
- Schwartz, Niles (2018). Off the Map: Freedom, Control, and the Future in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Reel Spirituality Monograph Series. Vol. 2. ISBN 978-1-5326-3658-5 – via Google Books.
- Willems, Brian (May 2018). "Null-A Aesthetics: Science-Fiction Separation in Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage and A.E. van Vogt's Null-A Three". .