[...]*we still hunt ghosts, fueled by a desire operationalized in a method of being close enough to something to sense it, because our form of mastery demands a closeness to things unseen, unprovable, indeed ‘nonsensical,’ yet unquestionably ‘there’* -Baxstrom

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Despret on Derrida's animal
the act of being seen by an animal ==> Derrida groups together on the end hand “scientists and philosophers =/= prophets and poets”
{ Bateson, Goodall, Bekoff, Smuts, and many others have met the gaze of the living diverse animals and in response undone an redone themselves & their sciences =/= Derrida }--Haraway--> why did Derrida leave unexamined the practices of communication outside the writing technologies he did know how talk about? ==> philosopher (speak in the absence of animal) =/= theoreticians (speak face to face with the animal) =/= scientists
•Derrida's original positioning: to speak (starting) from [~ a partir de] a real animal and not about animality [being animal] : to speak in the animal's presence and not in its absence --> this [this way of talking about animal is against his philosophical tradition] is not particularly original, it is part of the very game of philosophy: *to fight with ancestors and contemporaries [~=? recalcitrance تمرد tamarod] about great and noble ideas* (to denounce inequality and violence)

maintaining distance is a characteristic of the episteme of the French philosophical tradition

the topic of animal in French tradition:
•the animal can be a topic of philosophy if it is called up as a figure of otherness (or a figure of deprivation) [--> is that why i started to work and think about animal fables after i moved to germany? because i became identifiable as deprived other? and reading about the naming and denunciation of philosophical violence towards the animal became a proxy for philosophical violence towards myself as a foreigner?]
•animal as ancient ancestor (a search for difference with appeal)
•
}--> **as a figure caught up in theoretical and abstract issues** (a philosophical animal) --> animots: paper animals, abstract inexistent animals
=/= Derrida taking up the topic of the animal ==> to oppose a certain humanist hegemony, denouncing philosophical violence towards the animal
•Derrida's rejection of philosophical game par excellence (the game that deals with representations, framework of representation)



♥ the parable of the twelfth camel
An old man, sensing his impending death, called to his side his three sons, to share with them the little he still owned. He said to them: my sons, I have eleven camels. I bequeath half of them to the oldest, a quarter to the second son, and to you, my youngest, I give a sixth. Upon the father's death, the sons found themselves quite perplexed: how to divide their inheritance? A war over the division of goods seemed inevitable. With no apparent solution, the sons went to a neighbouring village to seek advice from an old sage. The old man thought awhile and then shook his head: I cannot resolve this problem. The only thing I can do for you is to give you my old camel. He is not very obedient and often does as he pleases. I don't know if you can use him but I think he may help you divide your inheritance. The sons brought the old camel back with them and divided up the inheritance: the first then received six camels, the second three and the youngest two. This then left the camel of the old sage, which they could return to his owner.

        ,     ,
‘'’ ‘'’   ‘'’   ‘’

this parable reveals particular and essential dimension of all forms of inheritance:
•[Despret:] they place us in a position of obligation --> to work out
•[Sina:] they had to go to the foreign to figure out their inheritance


the sons have to work out the *position of obligation*

*****inheritance (passed on as something that appears impossible) as such requires you to *start from* [=/= about, concerning, with] this inheritance
•“start from” implies precisely the fact of remaining obligated to that *from* which we speak, think, or act [~ learn from & create from events]
•“being obligated” implies learning to do, speak, act, decide, not about these events, not concerning them, not facing or against them, but from them
==> you are bound : *you honor the terms of the problem* (such as it is posed along with its contradictions ~ fubar)
==> (help you to) resist the common sense (or less common sense) solutions


[*]inheriting: an act that demands thought and commitment, an act that calls for our transformation by the very gift of inheriting --> my work on ajayeb, you start from ajayeb (better than “coughing”?)


Despert in reading Derrida through Haraway --> studying the way in which scientists were beginning to respond to their animals & becoming attentive to the animals’ responses in trun

[Sina + Despret + Haraway] ***to inherit is an act that demands a transformation on the part of the inheritor***

the importance of transforming that which is transmitted to us


thinking from animals
(Despret working on) the meaning of ”(starting) from” [a partir de]
•for philosophers: to depart from animals, to leave them as quickly as possible and never to return ==> “animal = text & pretext” : its function is to provide a reason for going (partir) elsewhere [<-- i have done this]


getting involved --to--> martyrdom


author-turned-ethologist --> classic genres of ethological literature

(a matter of) *performing through narration the passing obligation that is now mine*

(Latourian) *amateur: a person who likes and cultivates her tastes and does her best to cultivate a kind of becoming-sensitive to the world*

in ethology (and in animal sciences) monologues make terrible narratives

[@Femke, @Pierre, ?can we do without] the philosophical tradition of: **searching for traces of ideological and political contamination** in the work of scientific naturalist (or whatever other field) --> you (often) find a perfect target for this sort of critique
•(pay attention to) what makes a perfect target for your sort of critique (@Laura's Jane Fonda, etc.)

[zoological bird:] sociobiological literature prepares you to accept a certain kind of fact about this bird =/= Zahavi's babblers however do (altruism & cooperation) in a remarkably more inventive and diversified way and for entirely different reasons that sociobiological birds

anthropocentrism (credit birds with complex intentions, and [why?] complex intentions always seem human)
to see birds as “dancing” and for fairly complex reasons could only have been a result of the fact that the observers projected onto the animals their own frameworks and experiences


Despret observing the birds + their ethologist --> the birds made Zahavi interesting

(Despret discovering that) any theory of representation was at once partial and totalizing, because it proposed to elucidate the complex work of relations and encounters from the sole standpoint of the human

(how Despret became) interested in actual practices (with Stengers and Latour), in the way they articulated questions and responded to questions

****stories that scientists [and Disney or Hollywood] develop about animals are also our stories**** --> these stories transform humans and their animals
--Stengers--> sciences (of the contemporaneity) for which: **production of knowledge = production of a way of being** ==> (they do not reveal what animals are, rather) they follow and accompany an act of becoming together : *an act of becoming with the stories that we construct concerning them* (good or bad)
•birds will have been far more interesting starting from the moment that Zahavi proposed to connect their stories to others [~-> how Cinderella became interesting for me when her stories became connected to other stories =/= restructure her story to make her fit my contemporary political correctness]
•sheep will have been far more sophisticated starting from the moment that Thelma Rowell asked them interesting questions

**to ask interesting question: to create conditions in which sheep [beings, your subject] are able to demonstrate an interest in these questions

**interesting research: looking at the conditions that allow beings to become interesting


{ how scientists made their animals agents = how scientists created the[...]