Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal: At the Limits of Experience

2007

Modern insensitivity to nature is indeed only a variation of the pragmatic attitude that is typical of Western Civilization as a whole. Only the forms are different. The early trapper saw in the prairies and mountains only the prospect of good hunting; the modern businessman sees in the landscape an opportunity for the display of cigarette posters. The fate of animals in our world is symbolized by an item printed in the newspapers of a few years ago. It reported that landings of planes in Africa were often hampered by herds of elephants and other beasts. Animals are considered simply as obstructers of traffic.1

Human & Social Studies. Research and Practice, 2013

At a time when humanity experiences its greatest advances, major conflicts and abuses arise around the world due to a lack of humanism and reason within the meaning of the Enlightenment. Modernity and western comfort in our globalized society have not helped share and balance the wealth, nor preserve the natural resources; it has not prevented crimes against humanity nor the most insane dictatorial actions of the 20 th and early 21 st centuries. This went hand in hand with a massive degradation of the environment. Could the animal be the solution to all the mistakes we have made during the last century, instead of being considered an inferior, a slave? Could he not be the one who has managed the best in the fields of intelligence, self-regulation and respect of his vital environment? Should we not rather turn toward the animal to find a new balanced model? Respecting the environment and his peers seems to be the most striking evidence of intelligence, does it not? The animal has achieved this. Man has not. Focusing on the way man has treated animals may therefore help us to understand why we have treated our peers so badly.

2019

How do the social sciences and humanities deal with human-animal relationships? Between epistemic and political aims, animals have progressed on either side of the Atlantic as legitimate subjects of study and even as political subjects in their own right. This essay is an excerpt from S'engager pour les animaux, a book edited by Fabien Carié and Christophe Traïni and scheduled for publication in February 2019 in the Puf/Vie des idées collection. 'Obscurantism'. This was Jean-Pierre Digard's verdict on a large portion of recent social science and humanities (SSH) studies on human-animal relations. When asked by his colleagues to discuss whether anthropology had taken an 'animal turn', this domestication specialist explained that social changes in the representation of animals have had a direct impact on knowledge production in this regard. According to him, since the nineteenth century and the rise of animal protection, 'animalism' has grown by dint of progressively calling into question the idea that there is a radical boundary between humans and animals. From the 1970s onwards, intellectuals began producing normative theories on the humananimal relations and this then influenced the emergence of SSH research on the topic. In Digard's view, these theories called a second boundary into question: the boundary separating

Second Language Learning and Teaching

This book brings together well-researched essays by established scholars as well as forward-thinking aspiring researchers to study how literary and non-literary texts highlight 'animal presence' and explore non-anthropocentric relationships between human and animals. To be precise, it offers Posthumanist readings of animal-centric Literary and Cultural texts. The contributors take positions that put the precepts and premises of humanism into question by considering the animal presence in texts seriously. The essays collected here focus primarily on literary and cultural texts from varied interdisciplinary and theoretically-informed perspectives advanced by critical approaches such as Critical Animal Studies and Posthumanism. Contributors select texts beyond geographical and period boundaries, and demonstrate how practices of close reading give rise to new ways of thinking about animals. By implicating the "Animal turn" for the field of literary and cultural studies, this book urges us to problematize the separation of the human from other animals and rethink the hierarchical order of beings through close readings of select texts. It offers some fresh perspectives of Posthumanist theory, so that we can revisit those criteria that created species' difference from the early ages of human civilization. This book will constitute a rich and thorough scholarly resource on the politics of representation of animals in literature and culture. The essays in this book are empirically and theoretically informed; and they explore a range of dynamic, captivating and highly relevant topics. This book does more than simply decentering the 'human' by bringing animals onto the center of critical discourse and challenging the anthropocentric hierarchical relationship, which are the basis of Posthumanist readings. It also highlights the theoretical intersections between Animal Theory and other relevant cultural theories, that is the latest advancement in this field. The volume is divided into four main sections

Between the Species: An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals

~This paper is a chapter in the book 'Animals in Human Society: Amazing Creatures who Share our Planet' edited by Daniel Moorehead~ - - - Within ‘animal ethics’, and indeed with most debates concerning nonhumans, speciesism is often cited as the prejudice which most human-people (often unknowingly) hold and which ultimately lies as the underlying justification for (i) all of the arguments in support of factory farming, experimentation, hunting, and so on, and (ii) the lesser status and consideration that is given to nonhuman animals in ethical, political, legal, and social deliberations. Despite this, scholars have increasingly argued that ‘human chauvinism’, not speciesism in general, is a more accurate description of this prejudice, as speciesism can apply to any arbitrary species-preference whereas human chauvinism applies specifically to arbitrary preferences in favour of humans. Whichever term one uses, the aim of identifying whether a position rests solely on speciesism or human chauvinism is to see whether the argument put forward has a justifiable basis or is founded merely on a prejudice. The intention of this is usually an aim to demonstrate that the underlying problem that gives rise to the issues in ‘animal ethics’ is speciesism or human chauvinism, and thus that it is either of these that we must understand and eradicate before approaching the issues. In this paper I argue that while this attempt to resolve the issues has generally been a correct philosophical strategy, and largely convincing, it is anthropocentrism that is not only a greater problem for nonhuman animals but that is also the ultimate cause of most of the issues arising in ‘animal ethics’. I begin by considering what anthropocentrism is and how it is distinct from, yet related to, speciesism and human chauvinism. I argue that anthropocentrism is similar to androcentrism, in that it can include a chauvinism but can also involve unintentional world-views and systems of belief that goes beyond this. These additional elements, I argue, bias investigation and any positions put forward in the debates, while also creating new – and often unnoticed – difficulties for nonhumans. I explain why anthropocentrism as thus-defined is problematic for nonhuman animals, emphasizing the additional ways in which anthropocentrism raises difficulties for them, before explaining how anthropocentrism is related to (and likely causes) most of the issues relating to nonhumans; such as questions relating to culture, afterlife, property, intervention, hunting, entertainment, experimentation, consumption, activism, and so on. I finally point out how anthropocentrism is even involved within ‘animal ethics’, including those positions that reject speciesism and human chauvinism, and thus conclude that even while attempting to aid nonhumans these positions do not, and perhaps cannot, do as much as they could due to their implicit anthropocentrism. I then attempt to show how this situation may be resolved by recognizing, and removing (or at least limiting) as much anthropocentrism as possible when approaching the issues. I argue that this can be achieved by (truly) considering humans just as another animal that is no more special than any other, and attempting to consider all nonhuman points of view as of equal relevance in any issue. This, I claim, would have a profound effect not only for nonhumans and for the proposed resolutions made for each issue, but also for ‘animal ethics’, and more importantly for humanity and human society at large.

The XXI century forces us to think again, in a radical way, about the human-animals relationship. Violence toward animals has rapidly taken place in the public debate: veganism, animal products, animal testing and animals right are now significant themes in the political ground. We are currently part of a deep social transformation that involves every cultural aspect of the Western  world from science to literature: humanities, creative arts, and sciences are all shaken to its foundations. In view of this, the CfP 2018 has the aim to give voice to a philosophical urgency of our time through an academic multidisciplinary encounter. Dealing with the Animality means to redefine the anthropological paradigm of what is a human being beyond the Enlightenment frame. Thus, humankind becomes a permeable category for more- than-humans identities. Moving beyond Arnold Gehlen, Max Scheler, and Helmuth Plessner, we must replace Philosophical Anthropology with Philosophy of Animality. In this perspective, humans are no longer an isolated ontological entity, but the results of a constant co-becoming, through hybridization, with other living beings. Therefore, to investigate "animality" means get rid of the all-embracing anthropocentric prejudice. After the prison of metaphysical humanism, other ways to relate to the other are possible. The first step toward this new web of beings must be a new Philosophy of Animality. Several contemporary philosophies take into the account this frame: Posthumanism, Animals Politics, Environtmal Ethics and Ecology, Ecocritics, Ecofeminism, Multispecies Studies, Biopolitics, Ecofeminism, and so on...