WOH ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED TO MS. SARAH HAQ

RITIKA BENIWAL
S213CPS33
MA PSYCHOLOGY
SEMESTER 1

“It is ironic that the dog is more humane than the human”
-mark twain
“Man has animalised the woman and sexualised the animal”
- Phrase from “the sexual politics of meat - a feminist-vegetarian theory”

I am four years old, when my parents decide to move from Himachal to Delhi. However, our dog
(Sweetie) is not coming with us. She looks at me when we’re leaving, she thinks it’s just another
day and that we all are going out and she’ll see us later. Little does she know that this is the last
time she is looking at the only people she has ever called family. This incident from my life
continued to haunt my existence and still does as I think how Sweetie was such a dispensable being
in our home. Not a day goes by when I’m not consumed with the guilt of leaving her behind, even
though it was beyond my control at the time. I think she is the primary source that my feelings of
oneness with animals and hence, my veganism stems from. Naturally, taking up this book, “the
animal that therefore I am” to reflect on was an easy choice. In this analysis, I’ve attempted at
understanding the dichotomy of the man and the animal with the help of Derrida’s
conceptualisation of the same. I’ve not limited myself to only the first lecture and have also brought
in Levinas and Heidegger in my attempt. My ideas about the parallelism between animal and
sexuality have been somewhat influenced by the book, “the sexual politics of meat” even though
I have not quoted from or dived deep into its theory.

With the help of this comprehensive work by Derrida, learners understand the significance and
risks associated with what it may entail in being and following the nonhuman animal for
Jacques Derrida. I say "may entail" because Derrida usually uses the term "animal" as a metaphor
for anything that can't be controlled or restrained. Even crucially, the aforementioned term is
frequently used synonymous to hostile outcomes; if one is unable to escape it (which seems
tough), it ought to be eliminated. Additionally, one may notice that several ideas that have only
been very directly referenced in the individual pieces become more prominent as they repeatedly
resurface, nearly diagnostically, as we move along the book. This entails concerns with diversity
in sexuality, time, and, most importantly, monitoring. Monitoring or traceability brings to mind
the initial concept of the trace, i.e., the subconscious logic that torments the route of reasoning,
thus, confirms the tradition of curiosity shared by humans and wildlife of various genus. We
pursue indications, odours, and visual cues without realising to what place all of it might take us,
to who they might take us to, or even in what manner they might come to be a piece of us.

One acquires a feel of the author's personal technique as a type of traceability by as one goes
through the text. He gathers a phrase or symbol, pursues it for a time before letting it go as some
other odour takes its place. He subsequently traces that odour, merely to find it lead him back to
the first, which he has now found in a somewhat different setting. This voyage might be irritating
at points, however in its nearly spontaneous sussing, it embodies the notion of trailing as a
cognitive and developmental endeavour.

The author's mental tracing, then, leads him to quite distinct conclusions than that of his forebears
including Levinas, Kant, Descartes, Heidegger, Husserl, etc. if not, in his opinion, to brand-new
foundations. He asserts that any of the above have not given the topic of the
nonhuman animals such thorough consideration. The uniqueness of the word, 'animal' which is a
title that humans have accorded ourselves the privilege and the power to designate to the sentient
other, has specifically not been contested by either party. However, the whole past with what
humans believe themselves to be as a species is entwined with the need to set themselves apart
from this 'another', to whom we have given a label and that we have subjugated in order to
appropriate subjugation as our own. However, this narrative, this memoir of the man, has come to
a time which is unparalleled, making such inquiry essential. He underlines that the manner and
extent of this subjugation in contemporary times have evolved, and not only the reality of
subjugation. Consequently, both the archived context and a spirit of immediacy are involved in
Jacques's idea of following. he explains that No one presently can refute this circumstance, i.e., the
unparalleled magnitude of this subjugation of the beast.... Also, it is impossible to truly dispute the
renunciation that this entails. When describing the types of brutality committed against
nonhuman organisms via factory agriculture or genetic testing and alteration, the author hasn't
joined in the same repudiation and is not worried about using terms like "ethnocide" and
"extermination" that his predecessors might have avoided, all for the ostensible sentient health of
the human. His work aims to undermine the humanistic structures that view such parallels as
outrageous merely because they contrast humankind and nonhuman beings' existence.
The author highlights how an animal's existence, has developed to signify an existence of anguish,
but as a thinker, his main worry is the impact this will have on the significance that people assign
to their own self. He seeks to expose the false justifications used to classify the man in contrast to
the beast and assert dominance over latter by following and dissecting the issues through thinkers
like Descartes. The author questions how one can tell that reasoning is so distinct from smelling
and for what reason is this area of sensation is so overlooked or whittled down to a subordinate
role if reasoning is, the core of me as a man and which is the reason behind me becoming a
'human’. I show that oneself is not independent and that the "other" is not always man, at least not
in the same way that the author seems to have been driven to compose these papers by the
appearance of his cat.

Now, we could wonder, how does this put in place the author's infamous cat. Anyone hoping to
learn more about the universe or philosophy through the perspective of a canine or any other
nonhuman being will be dissatisfied with this specific ethology. According to Haraway, Derrida
in his book failed to seriously take into account a substitute type of interaction... one which
gambled realising additional information about felines as well as how to reflect back, maybe also
empirically, biochemically, and consequently existentially and empathetically. In a parallel vein,
individuals searching for a code of morality or a manual on how to interact with or exist with
other sentient creatures will likewise be let down. As we move along further in the lectures, the
author explicitly discusses the issue of morality in a series of paragraphs directed at Levinas,
whose profoundly insightful texts on morality and dichotomies had a significant impact on
Derrida. our author comes to the conclusion that Emmanuel Levinas has put the nonhuman being
beyond the arena of morality or ethics. Given the vast intangible Hebrew concept of existence that
forms the basis of the majority of Levinas's model of morality, Derrida deems the aforementioned
rejection of the nonhuman being as astonishing. The fact that only people legitimately expire and
therefore cannot be murdered, and it's just that men have a bare visage that exposes their
susceptibility and compels myself to react to it, to be accountable for it, or to become accountable
to it, obscures this premise of existence. Consequently, Levinas has to be seen as belonging to the
legacy of them whose comprehension of the matter is independent of 'the nonhuman being,' despite
the fact that it is firmly rooted in separateness.

In the author's analysis of Emmanuel, it is revealed that there are parallels among both the
marginalisation of the living other from cognizance and the marginalisation of distinction related
to sex, particularly when it comes to the concept of nakedness that flows throughout Levinas's
theory and, consequently, in association to who or what that has moral stance. Canines and
females are refused an ethical doorway in Levinas' account of a dog (Bobby) that became his
companion when he was a prisoner in a death centre. Could it be that the battle over the woman, a
phrase that has likewise been bagged with sometimes hostile repercussions, be related to the
sacrifice of the animal, which Jacques claims is as old as Origins? Derrida compares two versions
of The Origin and somewhat discusses differentiation pertaining to the sex.
The pair is granted control over the creatures in the earliest rendition of Adam, who is depicted as
masculine and feminine. But, only on the next edition Adam is first mentioned as a man and a man
alone—are the creatures given names. The (other) creatures, including the woman, obey Adam in
response to the titles Adam provides them instead of the other way around. With a captivating
interpretation of a text from Walter Benjamin, the author makes the argument that such labeling is
inextricably related to fatality and constitutes what makes the creatures mortal. The term 'the
animal' denotes the fundamental moral distinction between it and humans, as well as what enables
upon them the infliction.

The author chooses to follow the philosophical and religious rejections connected to the male-
centredness of the latter version rather than pursuing the possible repercussions of the former
account, in which females exist but labelling doesn't occur. The phrase 'disavowal,' which has the
entire psychoanalytical connotation of rejecting a truth which possesses the capacity to have
painful ramifications, is one that is often used in Derrida's text. His encounter with the cat
appears to introduce him to grips with what his forebears were unable to visualise (and thus the
marginalisation): that a nonhuman being, like that of a female, has an "other" perspective on
him and on the entire globe. This anguish may be that related to Darwin's descendance or the
Psychoanalytic theory of sexuality. The author reinterprets the aforementioned Origin scenario in
such a manner that the nonhuman beings look, which awakens subjectivity's awareness of
nakedness and consequent vulnerability, is intensified by the glance of a lady who is thought to be
watching the scenario, maybe through reflection. This scenario of affirmation exposes an angst of
identification and humiliation that can't be overcome but merely intensified into a humiliation of
being humiliated, if Jacques's interpretations of his forebears' repudiations are effective in their
deductions.

Now, the author positions his "I," a person and man, as a masculine mortal being even though he
seems to be doing as such with all the uncertainty that he believes he must remember and stake an
authority to on all such incidents. He even suspects that a memoir of any significance
couldn't avoid touching on this affirmation of simply stating that one is a male or one is a female
or that one is a male but a female too. It may just be simpler to express "Ecce animot," his term
for everything that is difficult to categorise by species or sexuality and whose existence is only
preserved by a term. Hence, the cat scenario alludes to a certain degree of the flexibility of
identification (wherein the other is overtly the nonhuman being) that various feminisms have
recognised and welcomed at minimum since the 1970s. Derrida appears to prove, without
explicitly mentioning the feminist movement, what so many of the participants theorised: that
dread of such permeability is a male dread and the urge to protect from it (to repudiate) is
constitutive of masculine-specific kinds of concealment or duplicity. The word "animot" shouldn't
be interpreted as a phrase to allay or dispel this anxiety, via the adoption of neutral or transsexual
designations or the rejection of variation. Animot's plural form (animaux) emphasises that
distinction ought to be pluralized instead of eradicated, drawing emphasis to the various
distinctions that could or could not be used to differentiate between genders and (human and
nonhuman) animals. These are additionally distinctions one holds about oneself, distinctions from
the labels one gives oneself and distinctions from the hybrid of a man and the non-man that we
believe we are. Every human, both men and women, no more understands how many there are of
us. And I really believe that's where autobiography started, states Derrida.

What has often been referred to as Derrida's "proto-ethical" is built on this understanding of my
responsibility to the nonhuman being or the animot being followed by me whose gaze challenges
myself and my convictions about the universe. This glance equips me, if nots urge me, to face the
limitations we hold as breathing, mortal creatures, as well as bringing me to recognise the skills
and capacities of someone who I might know nothing about and who i may never understand
regardless of my attempts to recognize. A more moral companionship, or existing with the
nonhuman other, may in reality rely on renouncing the world wisdom connected to existence.
(Here i am referring to the heiddeger's conceptualisation of mitsein and Dasein). He questions if
we truly see the universe as it is and in such a distinct way from "the other", which, in Heidegger's
view, simply understand it in connection to their needs and wants. Couldn't our vocabulary be
evidence of our personal failure to understand the universe beyond our individual ambitions and
narratival endeavours rather than being indicative of our genuine perception of it?

He appears to imply that the highest moral position would be to let "the other" to exist in their
natural state, free from our goals and our need for enlightenment. We could, nevertheless, struggle,
as the author does, to imagine a premise of life apart from our own aims since we are
autobiographical creatures. All we could do is monitor and carefully examine these efforts,
devoting close heed to the manner in which we create distinction. Consequentially, we could reject
the trails that profess to abandon "the other" in the pursuit of our differences while trampling on
their rights. Jacques Derrida's discourse on the beast/ Animot/ the nonhuman creature/ the
other takes on this "proto-ethical" approach.

CONCLUSION

The author provides a pleasant, insightful examination of how previous philosophical

thinkers may so readily believe that there exists a substantial difference separating humans and
nonhuman beings while being so honed into the subtlest conceptual complexities: Descartes'
investigation of reason, Levinas' analysis of morality, the psychological analysis by Lacan or
Freud, and Heidegger's research on just being all contain instances, or extensive suppositions, in
which the idea that the living "other" is distinguishable from a man assists them to comprehend
the mortal man without wholly challenging the relevance or, even so, the ideology of this
dichotomy.
What makes it possible to condense that much diversity into one item, including protozoans,
gazelles, and whales all identically as "the animot"? The term "animot" would seem in
philosophical traditions not only as a marginalised being to the arena of the "man" - a being which
does not seem to have an appearance, a consciousness or a 'self', but also as an argumentative
initialization that purports to resolve an issue the issue of characterising the self, drafting one’s
personal memoir; the issue of what it means to have an appearance or consciousness; the issue of
the privilege of dying (if nonhuman beings died the same way as humans did, how would
slaughterhouses exist?) . To put it another way, we may not be able to define what a man is, but
we can define what a man is not: the animot/the other.

Jacques pushes open a place for philosophical ideas in the midst of disputes concerning the place
of "the other" in this reality that is dominated by scientific experts, and practitioners. Before we
may inquire about how "the other" compares to us (we are aware of their communication, yet do
they speak? We are aware of their similarities to us, but to what extent? We must comprehend the
essence of the gap that really enables us to pose such concerns initially (what comprises our duty
for such beings, the species we consume, research on?). What political, theological, and
intellectual elements contribute to the "similitude" that distinguishes – whatever renders them
"similar" to us yet not exactly us? In what ways has brutality towards the "other" (both theoretical
and physical brutality) not merely not breached but also formed the foundation of human
knowledge, accountability, and morality is the most startling issue he poses.

The author's contest demands a detailed breakdown for the differentiations made before the moral
frameworks like that of human's right to control on the nonhuman given to us by God that attempt
to legitimise the dichotomy, even if this appears to be esoteric and perplexing (and to myself, it
mostly does). This urges the discussions about the subjection of animots past compassion and
emotionality. In this regard, this work would be significant for bioethicists, not simply because of
its indirect connection to testing and experimentation on animals, but also since it serves as a
powerful illustration of how doctrines do not always come before differentiation. "The Animal
That Therefore I Am" by Jacques Derrida is a series of lectures that aims to question such
divisions, and at its heart, it is an examination of the "human sciences"; it considers both what is
included as well as what is thought to constitute humanity. The author’s careful observation of
how "separateness" is so readily presumed and his in-depth inquiry of it could be enlightening for
the health human sciences (like psychology), wherein concepts of "separateness" are so prevalent
(like in therapist-client relationships, in "other" forms of organisms, in the difference between
wellbeing and disease, normalcy and anomaly, etc.).