The Animal-to-Come: Zoopolitics in Deconstruction

What happens to political thought if we take the problematic nature of the human animal distinction, not as something to be demonstrated, but rather as a given? What sorts of animal-existential possibilities are derived by tracking not the animal but the animal-to-come through the inherited traditions and institutions that continue to shape prevailing concepts of culture and politics? Robert Briggs lays out an original interpretation of Derrida’s work which takes the ‘question of the animal’ beyond the critique of political and philosophical anthropocentrism. Eschewing approaches grounded in animal vulnerability, Briggs reviews theories of power, politics and culture in terms of their capacity to enable novel images of ‘zoopolitics’. Along the way he engages with recently translated work in the emerging field of philosophical ethology, including Vinciane Despret’s What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? (2016) and Dominique Lestel’s empirical and constructivist phenomenology of human-animal relations. Through these and other interventions, Briggs departs from well-established positions in animal studies to develop new ways of thinking animal politics today.