Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Williams, Linda

Titel

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

Ist Teil von

• New formations, 2012-09, Vol.76 (76), p.21-37

Ort / Verlag

London: Lawrence & Wishart

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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 human-animal 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.