Rethinking Human-Animal Ontological Differences: Derrida's “Animot” and Cixous' “Fips”

Abstract

Dominant philosophical discourse has long attempted to reinforce the human-animal opposition that privileges the human and relegates the animal to a state bereft of logos, spirit, consciousness, and reason. Yet the recent watershed in the emerging multidisciplinary field of animal studies decisively rejects the hierarchically based human-animal distinction. Among recent scholarship, the work of Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous is exemplary. Jacques Derrida's seminal text The Animal That Therefore I Am and Hélène Cixous’ Stigmata engage in a profound reflection on the anthropocentric fallacy that humans are privileged vis-à-vis animals. I argue that Derrida's concept of the “animot” establishes criteria inherent to animals that change their stature in relation to humans, which I relate to Cixous’ autobiographical narrative. As I show, Cixous’ primal encounter with the dog Fips produces a stigma that ruptures the barrier between the human and the animal; its dehiscence reveals a profound human animality generated by shared suffering. Derrida's and Cixous’ post-anthropocentric reflections are pivotal to rethinking ontological difference between animals and humans based on shared suffering, finitude, and compassion that ethically raises the stakes of the question of the animal and destabilizes established notions of what is intrinsically human.