The use in the singular of a general concept like ‘animal’ is disturbing. Every time we say ‘animal’, every time a philosopher or someone else says in the singular and without adding anything else, ‘animal’, he thus claims to refer to every living being except man.
SHANNON BAILEY: One can say about animals what Nietzsche said about books (at least about all the books he wrote before him), that is, they suspect that they are apologizing for man. Talking about animals has always been the best way to talk about man, his difference, and his uniqueness. Aristotle’s living without logos, insensitive Cartesian machines, as well as Heidegger’s “poor beings in the world” is a mirror of all that man is not, and in this way, the best way to get an idea of what ought to be authentic. Animals act as an exhibition model, the better we know them, the more we know about ourselves…
In the millenarian tradition of self-analysis, man looked at himself through the lens of an animal to discover himself, but above all to realize himself differently each time. And since the glasses have two lenses, we can say that another very effective filter with which the man focused his image was madness…
The formation of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, portends the interruption of dialogue, lays the separation as it has already been acquired, and plunges into oblivion all those imperfect words in which the exchange of madness with the mind occurred. The language of psychiatry, which is the monologue of reason over madness, could prove itself only on this silence. I did not want to make the history of this language, but rather to make of this silence the archeology…
Indeed, in the gallery of mirrors that from time to time exhibited the “authentic” image of man, that which the word represents undoubtedly occupies a privileged place. Man is many things, but first of all he is the animal that speaks, he is the living being “on the way to language”. And if this is true, then other animals can only be silent. But not. Animals also talk, and how…
Not only do animals talk, they also have accents. On the coast of San Francisco, for example, fifty miles from each other, in Marin, Berkeley, and Sunset Beach, live three communities of white crown sparrows who speak three different dialects… The naturalist notes that many birds learn, copy and pass on the song from generation to generation, practically unchanged, giving life to a true singing tradition. They adopt a strategy inspired by what’s called “matching bias,” until recently considered the prerogative of humans…
If animals talk, then are animals like humans? No. But even at this point, the complexity that intensifies in Darwin’s words and according to which the difference is “in degree rather than gender” deserves further reflections. It is not a matter of drawing borders closer to reality or erasing the very idea of difference. “We must be able, as Elizabeth de Fontaine notes, to dismantle the arrogance of human personality without offending humanity”…
The animal issue is not an animal rights issue, or at least it isn’t just that. The issue of the animal is not only concerned with the ethics of the relationship between species, it is first and foremost about a culture’s ability to trace identity without relying on opposing criteria. The animal question concerns the ability of culture to think about complexity. Jacques Derrida’s ideas help in this regard. Derrida devoted the last years of his research to the question of the boundaries between man and animal. Neither So I am the animal, released posthumously in 2006, Derrida invites you to pay attention to the same word “animal”… He says “animal” is the word “disturbing”.
“The use in the singular of a general concept like ‘animal’ is disturbing, as if all non-human living things could be grouped together in the general sense of this ‘common place’… In this concept the handyman will be closed… All living things that man does not recognize as his brothers, neighbors, or brothers. He adds: «Every time we say ‘animal’, every time a philosopher or someone else says in the singular and without adding anything else, ‘animal’, he thus claims to refer to every living being except man, well, all the time, the subject of this The sentence, that “yes”, that “I” says nonsense ». Before you start the new game of differences, stop and think: it is better to remain silent than to speak and remove all doubts. SOURCE…
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