History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence and Freedom

"The question of the animal is the question of
subjectivity and power. It provokes a particular tension
between philosophical ontology, politics and
psychoanalysis, and it is interesting to track how in
the unstable field of the ‘human’ animality produces
itself in a radical way. Gainsaying the fact that animality
has traditionally been consigned to non-historical
nature, animals have a history. But the logic of this
history does not conform to the optimism of the
humanistic discourse of progressive liberation and
emancipation of animals that would finally secure
their rights. Quite the contrary; it seems rather that
from ancient totemism, through the sequence of
exclusions and inclusions, to the present tragedy and
farce that combine slaughterhouses, pet shops and
global touristic safaris, animals have had a bad ‘career’.
Historically, they failed. But this point of failure
is at the same time a point of departure – for the
new history of metaphysics, for the new materialist
politics of nature, for the new horizon of the human
animal."

Designed by Luisa Lorenza Corna