This is Not Sufficient by Leonard Lawlor

Author:Leonard Lawlor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI005000, Philosophy/Ethics and Moral Philosophy, PHI027000, Philosophy/Movements/Deconstruction
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2007-10-30T04:00:00+00:00

Following, Waiting, Carrying—Rams

On the basis of the analysis I have just completed, we can say that we have not really been thinking. We have not really been questioning language. We have been affirming it; we have been in the zone of faith. But this zone tells us what we should do. We can add the adverb and say that we should not be thinking badly. No, we should think well: it is, once again, undeniable that animals suffer. In “The Animal that Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” Derrida tells us that this thought of undeniability is not “the rock of indubitable certainty, the foundation of every assurance that we could, for example, look for in the cogito, in the Je pense donc je suis. But from another perspective we are here putting our trust [fions] in another agency that is just as radical, although it is essentially different from it: the undeniable” (A 49/ ATIA 396). Through the “nous fions,” we see that Derrida is referring back to the level of faith. It is from this level of faith or trust that we can say “donc je suis.” I have already hinted at this: throughout L’animal que done je suis, Derrida plays continuously on the homonymic relation between “être” and “suivre,” between “je suis,” that is, “I am,” and “je suis,” that is, “I follow.” Minimally, following implies a path, a track, traces. Is it possible for animals in their tracings to lead us astray?

According to Derrida in “And Say the Animal Responded,” Lacan does not think so, and this is why Lacan’s reflections on animals are, for Derrida, not sufficient.22 Lacan remains within the Cartesian tradition that the phrase “l’animal que donc je suis” is putting in question. For Lacan, in “The Subversion of the Subject,” there is a clear distinction between the animal’s strategic pretense, which occurs in pursuit, war, or seduction, and human deception in speech, which is lying (ASAR 175/130).23 Derrida specifies the idea of deception in speech: “deception involves lying to the extent that, in promising what is true, it includes the supplementary possibility of telling the truth in order to lead the other astray, in order to have him believe something other than what is true” (ASAR 175/130). Even though Lacan admits that animals use lure and dance, “the choreography,” as Derrida says, of the hunt and seduction, Lacan denies of them this power to pretend consciously that one is pretending (ASAR 175/130; see also RPS 83/65). We can see already the problem with this Lacanian distinction. It puts humans who are supposed to be subjected to the unconscious on the side of consciousness (we consciously pretend to pretend), while the animals, lacking conscious second-order deception, end up on the side of the unconscious. But the problem with the distinction really lies in the fact that one does not know “in the name of what knowledge or testimony… it would be possible to calmly declare that the animal in general is incapable of pretending pretense” (ASAR 182/135).

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