Apparaître en animal - Journée d'étude - EDOCSA

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2017

Since the field of Animal Studies has opened up, the human and social sciences, in North American and in Europe, have developed an almost exclusive interest in the human side of this subject, examining human uses, practices and most particularly human representations of animals, in part because of a certain scholarly infatuation with cultural studies since the 1980s.1 After having used these approaches myself many times, I feel they are now insufficient because they have created and maintained a blind spot at their center: that of animals as feeling, acting, responding beings, who have their own initiatives and reactions. Scholars have had much to say about humans, and very little to say about animals, who remain absent or are transformed into simple pretexts, pure objects on which human representations, knowledge, practices are exercised without consequence. In this sense, the history of animals that has developed over the last thirty years is in reality a human history of animals where these latter have very little place as real beings. Looking at Real Animals We must move away from this approach rooted in a Western cultural worldview that has impoverished the dialectical theme of humans and animals, reducing it to a field with one magnetic pole (humans) and a single directional pull (humans towards animals) thus forgetting or dismissing much of its reality and complexity. We must look more closely at the influence of animals in their relationships with humans, at their role as actual actors, in light of ethology's growing insistence-at least for certain species and an increasing number of them-on the behaviors of each animal as actor, individual, and even person; on the cognitive capacities of animal individuals; and on the sociability and cultures of animal groups-and thus revealing the inadequacies of purely human approaches. Similarly, historical documents show, when this information is not rejected as anecdotal, that humans have seen or foreseen and assessed animal interests and have reacted, acted, and imagined as a result. We must leave the human side, moving to the animal side,2 in order to better understand human/animal relationships but also in order to better know these living actor-beings who deserve to be studied in and of themselves. This means that the definition of history must be broadened, abandoning the too restricted definition of "a science of humans in time,"3 in which many historians have become entrenched. This definition is not inviolable; it has been historically constructed, from Fustel de Coulanges to Bloch, with two events being of particular importance: first, the formation of the human sciences as a means to studying the human independently of the natural sciences that had a certain monopoly on knowledge; and second, the broadening of the human sciences during the 1900s to 1930s to include the study of all aspects of the human and not just those related to the political. It is now time to redefine history as the "science of all living beings in time" and to become interested in these living beings' evolutions, at the very least in those evolutions that have been recorded in diverse historical documents and that could be the object of study for a historian versed in the field. At the same time, we must go beyond the cultural approach-note that I did not say abandon this approach-that tends to reduce the human and social sciences to an exercise in deconstruction and close examination of social discourses, and thus arrive at representations that are considered to be the only observable reality. This work is necessary; but the success of cultural approaches has transformed an essential preliminary step into an ultimate finality. We must once again be searching for realities using the concept of "situated knowledges"4 to validate a building of knowledge that is not ignorant of, nor taken in by, its context of elaboration. We need to apply this to the diverse human actors who have used, become close to, and observed animals, and who have become witnesses to animals in varying degrees using observation and representation. We need to take into account the conditions under which these discourses were produced so that when we bring together, test and critique information that is partial-in the sense of being incomplete and biased-we arrive at some sense of that reality. We must also abandon the culturally constructed Western notion of animals as passive beings and see them instead as feeling, responding, adapting, and suffering. In other words, we need to start with the hypothesis that animals are not only actors that influence humans, but that they are also individuals with their own specific set of characteristics, they are even people with their own behaviors, in short, they are subjects. These ideas are no longer taboo5 and should be tested in the field while leaving room for some flexibility in how the definitions are used. We must refrain from starting with (too-well) defined concepts, whose reality we hope to prove, because then we simply configure these concepts according to the form we know best, that is, the human form, or more precisely the European human form at a given time, and once again we fall into the trap of ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism. We must realize that our concepts are always situated: in time, as historians show us; in space, as ethnologists point out6; and amongst living beings as ethologists are beginning to demonstrate.7 Western culture has defined the subject as thinking, self-conscious, and as having recourse to conscious choices and strategies, all the while forgetting that this definition-that it takes as the definition-is in fact a situated, inferred version of the human. Moreover, this underlying portrait includes a set of philosophical implications that place humanity at the top as absolute reference, just as the Western world placed itself at the top in the past. When one clings to this definition while observing animals, one uses a discourse of domination as a tool of investigation, arriving at the already-drawn conclusion that there are no subjects among animals. It is when more supple definitions are adopted that one can envisage the concept of animals as subjects or come to a conclusion even if not all the parameters are met. We must remember that we have just barely begun to search for these parameters in the animal world; if we find that these parameters lack some consistency, it may be that we need to consider a greater plurality of meanings. Experimenting with key concepts does not mean falling into the trap of anthropomorphism, just as attributing flexibility and suppleness to concepts under investigation does not mean sliding into vague impressionism. What such an approach entails is a form of critical anthropomorphism that watches with curiosity, asks difficult questions, tries out critical concepts, observes without prejudice, and avoids an already conclusive anthropomorphism that foists humanity on animality and thus denies their specificities. It also entails being as open as possible to the potential capabilities of animals, many of whom we still do not know very well. Finally, this approach means seeing the diverse expressions of different faculties in order to adopt wider definitions of them. This is already being done for physical abilities (we know that many species do not see the world as we do but we do not deduce from this that they can not see), but we remain reticent when it comes to doing the same for mental abilities because these are what allow us to value ourselves over animals. This is not a question of mixing up all living beings, but rather it is a question of appreciating the diversity of all and the richness of each one. This means abandoning the shallow, puerile, distorted dualism that opposes humans to animals and in which philosophies and religions have trapped us for the last 2500 years. First, this dualism is shallow because it opposes a concrete species, the human, to a concept, the animal, that does not exist in the fields nor in the streets and that is nothing more than a category masking the reality of a multiplicity of species that are each very different. Second, this dualism is puerile because it poses the question of a difference

Athenaeum CVII, 1 , 2019

DIRETTORI DARIO MANTOVANI GIANCARLO MAZZOLI (responsabile) SEGRETARI DI REDAZIONE FABIO GASTI -DONATELLA ZORODDU PERIODICITÀ SEMESTRALE

Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia, 2021

La cuestión de la subjetividad animal concierne a la investigación filosófica y etológica por igual. En este ensayo he enfrentado al problema desde un enfoque etológico filosófico. Creo que es incorrecto atribuir subjetividad a la conciencia, por dos razones: 1. es una petición de principio que no explica la condición subjetiva; 2. No considera la alta subjetividad del inconsciente. Si la conciencia es como una luz que ilumina los procesos cognitivos, la subjetividad, como resultado del mundo interior del individuo, precede a la conciencia. Mi propuesta se basa en un nuevo modelo de animalidad que desafía la visión cartesiana de la máquina animal, regida por automatismos. Las aptitudes innatas y aprendidas deben ser consideradas como herramientas, disponibles para el individuo, y no como automatismos que lo mueven. Esto significa aplicar un modelo de esquema en contraposición al modelo asociativo tradicional. El modelo de esquema convierte al individuo en usuario y no a un esclavo d...

D Editore, 2016

Se chiediamo a politici, scienziati, intellettuali, ecclesiastici, agricoltori o comuni cittadini che cosa sono gli OGM, difficilmente riceviamo una risposta univoca. Oltre a non essere univoca, la risposta tende a trascendere il dato tecnico. Per alcuni, rappresentano un vaso di pandora, cibo Frankenstein, la strada verso l’apocalisse, lo smarrimento dell’Eden. Per altri rappresentano invece l’agricoltura ad alto rendimento e senza pesticidi del futuro, un modo intelligente di produrre farmaci e alimenti, la nuova via verso il benessere globale, l’Eden ritrovato. Quando l’iperbole prende il posto dell’argomentazione, i toni si fanno accesi, tra le posizioni si aprono distanze siderali, significa che non siamo più semplicemente di fronte a una “controversia scientifica”, ma piuttosto a un “conflitto ideologico”. Assumendo una prospettiva politologica, l’autore analizza il “discorso pubblico” relativo agli OGM e fa il punto della situazione sugli schieramenti in campo, scrutinandone le convinzioni scientifiche, le idee politiche, le credenze religiose e le dottrine filosofiche.