Write the Otherness, Inscribe the Animal

Between Jacques Derrida and Clarice Lispector

Abstract

Abstract: It is a matter of presenting, through an articulation between philosophy and literature, the ethical-political question that the problem of animal alterity poses. For this, I first present a partial reading on the various lectures given by Jacques Derrida on the subject. Conferences that have been assembled on the title “The Animal that therefore I am “, a true essay for a future philosophy capable of (re) writing animality from its own tradition. In this rereading, I propose that the main result of the Derridian text is a replacement of the ethical question of violence over the other, as well as a political reflection on the anthropocentric character of modernity. Having done that, I turn to an analysis of a short story by Clarice Lispector entitled “O crime do professor de matemática”. Short story which consists of an acute report on the relationship between man and animal. More than a simple exercise of exemplification, it is a matter of thinking with literature a theme that has historically been cloistered by philosophical discourse in the binarism proper to what Derrida calls the “cogito tradition.”

Keywords: Derrida; Lispector; animal studies; humanism; desconstruction.