Darwin and Derrida on Human and Animal Emotions: The Question of Shame as a Measure of Ontological Difference

Abstract

This essay reflects on how studies in human emotions, and studies of the emotional qualities of shame in particular, may be brought to bear on the study of humananimal relations. Derrida's late essays on human - animal relations are compared to Darwin's seminal works and to social theories of the emotions in order to emphasise how traditional regimes of theocentric logic on the animal still prevail. However, in the context of a global industrialised instrumentalisation of the animal, widespread erosion of biodiversity and mass extinctions, Derrida's account of the 'trauma' Darwinism has inflicted on conventional epistemological framework of human-animal relations acquires a new urgency in the need for a profound shift in the way we think about animals and their ontological status