Derrida and 'The Animal That Therefore I Am'

 Jacques Derrida’s work as a philosopher was punctuated with animal encounters and experiences, and The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008)[1] comments on the relegation of animals in the human and animal divide. This separation, that positions a wide host of species into a mundane category of ‘animal’ and only one species in the status of ‘human’, dates back to thinkers such as Heidegger, Kant and Descartes, among others.

“Since so long ago, can we say that the animal has been looking at us? What animal? The other.” (Derrida 2008 pp.3)

Derrida famously encounters a difference between two “nudities without nudity”(Derrida 2008 pp.5) when his cat looks upon him naked. Derrida in feeling shame, feels so regardless of the knowledge that the cat feels nothing that we know of except the act of observing; but even that word is not accurate, as the cat is looking “just to see” (Derrida 2008 pp.4). This idea of being naked like an animal (a ‘beast’) is a rub for Derrida, as animals do not care to know they are naked, however man is acutely aware of it – to be so close to the natural way of things is alien for man as it is not proper, and of course, cats know nothing of how to act properly due to it being a quintessentially human construct.

Through Derrida, we can understand the question of words, or language, in relation to the animal other. The cat does not respond to witnessing Derrida’s nakedness, and if it did we would have to know how to determine a response from a reaction. Therein lies the issue of translation we will touch on in due course.

Within this muddle of shame and compulsion to dress or cover oneself, Derrida, in hurrying the cat out of the room, explains “I no longer know who (…) I am chasing, who is following or haunting me. Who comes before and who is after whom?” as “to necessitate an “I am inasmuch as I am after the animal” or “I am inasmuch as I am alongside the animal”” (Derrida 2008 pp.10) is to illicit a being-with the animal. This being-with, in any form, therefore constitutes the following:

If I am (following) after it, the animal therefore comes before me, earlier than me. The animal Is there before me, there next to me, there in front of me – I who am (following) after it. And also, therefore, since it is before me, it is behind me. It surrounds me. And from the vantage of this being-there-before-me it can allow itself to be looked at, no doubt, but also (…) it can look at me. It has a point of view regarding me. The point of view of the absolute other.”(Derrida 2008 pp.10-11)

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[1] The book is a translation of Derrida’s ten hour address to the Cerisy conference in 1997 (“The Autobiographical Animal”) and an assemblage of two published sections.