Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow) - Reading Report

 

Jacques Derrida with his cat

In this reading report I will be looking at an extract from Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. I chose him because I wanted to focus more on ‘Nature’ for my Final Research Project, I found his work to be interesting and I wanted to dive deeper, carrying on from my last project which was about animals. He is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he does he many of his texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology. Importantly associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. 

To begin with, Derrida explores a moment where he is exposed naked in front of his pet cat as he walks out of the shower. He states that he feels uncomfortable, unease and questions himself if its normal to feel this way while being naked in front of his cat. 

“The animal, therefore, is not naked because it is naked. It doesn't feel its own nudity. There is no nudity "in nature."” (Derrida. J., 2002, p.374)

What Derrieda means by this is that ‘nakedness’ doesn’t apply to animals because they don’t have anything to take off to be naked, unlike us. He then says “There is no nudity "in nature."”, explicitly stating that we aren’t a part of nature and those who are do not experience to feeling or thought of being naked. However, why aren’t we apart of nature? Maybe because we no longer act like the animals who are closer to nature, thus making us feel uncomfortable when we are made to act more like animals, without clothes. Derrida then talks about how nakedness is a state of mind “conscious or unconscious”, his cat would be unconscious of himself being naked, so why does Derrida feel uncomfortable while his cat doesn’t even understand the peer existence of one nakedness. Perhaps its the concept of nakedness, which is being vulnerable. 

The concept of nakedness is the same as being vulnerable and animals don’t feel vulnerable because they have no clothes to take of. However, they do have a different concept of vulnerability which is for example when a dog or cat shows its belly at you, as its a area where they would find it hard to fight or flee while being on their backs. They are letting themselves be vulnerable in our presence showing us their trust. Although, the fact that they get uncomfortable while being vulnerable like humans do, is less likely. From experience my dog used to love to get his belly rubbed and being uncomfortable didn’t exist. I believe to us clothes are a sort of protection and taking it off is like taking our shield down. The question now, is it right for Derrida to feel like he has no shield while in front of his cat? which doesn’t have any awareness of the meaning of being without clothes. Maybe, if we were more similar to his cat of nature we would know the answer.

Derrida then goes onto a different theme. Communication. Specially the language between two species. He goes to talk about Alice in Wonderland taken from a ‘Through the Looking Glass‘ by Lewis Carrol and uses Alice, the heroine to help him explain his thoughts on this new theme. 

“whatever you say to them, they always purr. "If they would only purr for 'yes,' and mew for 'no,' or any rule of that sort," she had said, "so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?"(Derrida. J., 2002, p.377)

Communication has always been a thick barrier between two different species some harder then others, Derrida explains how Alice wants to speak with her kitten but cannot even get a different meow for ‘yes’ and ‘no’, thus not being able to hold a simple conversation. Furthermore, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response from her kitten wouldn’t even create a conversation perhaps more of a one sided interrogation. Either way a response wouldn’t be given because the cat himself wouldn’t understand our language just like how we don’t understand his. Importantly animals don’t have conversation like humans, they have reactions is read of responses. For example, when I want to ‘communicate’ with my cat, i would say her trigger words, such as ‘food’, ‘ball’, ‘outside’ and more. She wouldn’t give me a specific ’yes’ or ‘no’ but a reaction, such as excitement for the ball or just ignore me if she didn’t want the ball.  A reaction is perhaps more instinctual as well, because even if my cat didn’t want food she would still give me an excited body language making me think she’s saying a ‘yes’. 

“Cheshire Cat had told her, in the course of a scene that deserves a long meditation: "'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad"' (Derrida. J., 2002, p.378)

“You can speak to an animal...but it doesn't reply, not really, not ever, that is what Alice concludes.” (Derrida. J., 2002, p.378)

Overall, He realises that the sense of response is implicit but importantly its non existent, just like Alice concludes herself. Animals cannot communicate with us because they don’t have conversations themselves, its not something they are capable of doing and in a way it’s mad of us to assume they can.  

A photo of my cat ‘Mika’

References:

Derrida, Jacques, and David Wills. “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow).” Critical Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 2, 2002, pp. 369–418