Zwierzęce, jakiego nie ma

Abstract

The text constitutes an attempt to discuss the idea of the “animal” itself, which is an empty set. Following Jacques Derrida’s line of thought, we remain surprised, asking what links the elephant with the ant or the echidna with the hedgehog. The only benefit of the concept of the “animal” lies in revealing the way in which humans try to extricate themselves from the net designed by them for “animals,” but ultimately end up wrapping it tightly about themselves. The question about the socalled “animal” constitutes part of the battle over language that seems to have forgotten that it was born from the relation with animals; however, it preserves this knowledge not in the scientific jargon, but in those of its registers which allow people to talk about the individual relation not with the “animal,” but with the concrete individual of a concrete species.