LFU:online

Elaboration of selected philosophical approaches to the field of Human-Animal Studies; knowledge of significant philosophical positions dealing with animals; problematization of the definition of "animal" others in the interest of philosophical self-reflection.

"Can one speak of the animal?" (Derrida 2008, 21) Jacques Derrida asks this bizarre question in his script The Animal That Therfore I Am (2006), in which he draws attention to the fact that the history of philosophical thought has repeatedly tried, since its beginnings, to encircle "the animal" as a theorem, whereas experiences of dealing with animals that turn to us - in one way or another - i.e. that have a part in our everyday life, have mostly been denied or neglected. In remembrance of "this immense disavowal" (dénégation; Derrida 2008, 14), which comes to bear in particular when the "animal" is spoken of in the singular and as an object, we will thus follow the traces of animals that have been left behind by or can be spotted through philosophical texts.

Reading seminar; presentations followed by discussions.  

Written.

Agamben, Giorgio. Das Offene. Der Mensch und das Tier. Aus dem Italienischen von Davide Giurato. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003.

Derrida, Jacques. Das Tier, das ich also bin. Aus dem Französischen von Markus Sedlaczek. Wien: Passagen, 2010.

Donaldson, Sue und Will Kymlicka. Zoopolis. Eine politische Theorie der Tierrechte. Aus dem Englischen von Joachim Schulte. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013.

Haraway, Donna. Das Manifest für Gefährten. Wenn Spezies sich begegnen. Hunde, Menschen und signifikante Andersartigkeit. Aus dem Englischen von Jennifer Sophia Theodor. Mit einem Nachwort von Fahim Amir. Berlin: Merve, 2016.

Further literature will be announced in the seminar.

None.