Hospitality (with the) Animal

Abstract

Starting from that form of dominance (knowledge – power – ownership) that men have always exercised over the rest of the living beings and that entails reducing the difference of the other, the strange, to an economy of the self; facing the “inability” of so many philosophical trends to overcome the traditional positions of indifference – if not violence – with “the” animal, this article, which vindicates animal hospitality and hospitality with the animal, puts forward a Derrida who’s never ceased to reflect upon these questions from his earlier to his latest texts. He not only wanted to deconstruct the presumable, unique and unbreakable limit between man and the animal, he also seemed to vindicate a living-together of living beings respectful of everyone’s radical singularity.