HYBRID COMMUNITIES

Abstract

This article provides an extract from the second half of Lestel's book Animality (1996/2007). His book is divided into two parts. In the first part Lestel considers a number of ways in which humans and animals have been represented, particularly with respect to their supposed differences and borderline cases, over the course of Western history. To this end one reads of various depictions, construc- tions, and erasures of animals, including those of feral children, the animal-machines of Des- cartes and company, animals of ethological study, as well as artistic animals, suffering animals, speaking animals, cultural animals, and more. The first part is largely devoted, then, to past representations of animals as seen through Lestel's unique perspective. The second part, much of which is translated here, conveys Lestel's own observations, as developed most explicitly in his concept of “hybrid com- munities” between humans and animals. It is equal parts evolutionary and cultural anthropol- ogy, ethological ethnography, and philosophical creation of concepts, all in an attempt to situate “animality” at the interface of animals and humans. Rather than think animality, therefore, on the basis of animals, Lestel conceptualizes animality as a characteristic that develops between humans and animals in as much as they share, despite their curious alterity to one another, meaning and interests.