Animality: philosophical and literary encounters at the frontiers of anthropology

Abstract

The concept of animality makes it possible to reconsider human and non-human animals together without erasing their differences or reducing them to a rigid opposition. Against approaches that either absolutize the rupture between them or defend complete continuity, this special issue seeks to restore doubt, surprise, and speculative inquiry. Animality emerges as a problematic notion that compels us to reconsider human identity, the Western philosophical legacy, and the relationships among complex living beings. From an interdisciplinary perspective, philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, biology, and ethology examine sensitivity, affectivity, language, imagination, and culture. Although these approaches cannot be reduced to one another, their diversity proves epistemologically productive. Together, they demonstrate that every reflection on animality entails an anthropological question and that every inquiry into humanity necessarily refers to animals and to the unstable, shifting boundaries through which the human and the non-human continually redefine one another.