Derrida: I suck, so I'm here
01
The cat's gaze
Derrida with his cat "Logos"
In the essay "Animals Therefore I Am", Derrida describes his special encounter with a cat. "Can we say that animals have been watching us for a long time?" (Depuis le temps, peut-on dire que l'animal nous regarde?) he asked. David · Wills, the English translator of the article, notes in a footnote that the phrase could actually be translated as: "Can we say that animals have been a topic of concern for us for a long time?" In a sense, we start by asking the question: Are animals important in Derrida's "long-standing" research? Obviously, many of Derrida's readers overlook this.
It seems to me that Derrida has always been concerned with the question of the situation of animals: the question of animals not only occupies an important place in the history of philosophy, but also runs through his thinking. Therefore, he tells us in his essay "Therefore I Am Animals" that "biological problems (especially animal problems)" are "always the most important and critical questions" for him. However, Derrida's question is more obvious than the previous one, namely, "Can we say that animals have been watching us for a long time?" David · Wells agrees that this layer of meaning is more important. When Derrida looks back at his previous writings in Animals, I Am, he may be focusing on this meaning. Derrida finds herself under the watchful eye of an animal, and this question is the response to this unique event. Perhaps all of Derrida's writings on animals carry some traces of such events.
The "example" we are going to discuss here is Derrida's personal experience of having a meeting with a cat, or rather, his gaze with the cat.
Derrida stresses that this is not just an ordinary cat. Although he often resorts to animal figures in his work, the cat in this case, the cat that is looking at him, is not the cat in Baudelaire's or Rilke's poetry, nor the cat that Buber is watching. Derrida briefly explores the images of these cats in his essay "Animals Therefore I Am", and the cats he is talking about are:
A real cat – really, trust me – a kitten...... There are many felines that appear in myths, religious stories, literature, and fables, and the cat that crept into my room here is not a symbol of all the felines on the planet.
In the same way, the cat's gaze is not a casual gaze. The kitten's gaze on him occurred at a very strange moment: he was naked at this time. Derrida told us that the kitten followed him into the bathroom and saw him naked. When he found himself "naked and silent" under the cat's gaze, he said:
I couldn't suppress my instinctive reaction to being naked. Protests against this inappropriate behaviour have made it impossible for me to remain silent. This protest stemmed from the fact that I found myself naked in front of a cat that was still looking at me motionless...... It's an experience of "misbehaving," and it's unique, unparalleled, and primordial. It appears as "naked truth", under the persistent gaze of animals. The animal's eyes may be affectionate, or they may be indifferent. It may have looked at me out of curiosity, or it may have been out of knowledge.
Derrida found himself naked under the gaze of a cat, and he couldn't easily overcome the embarrassment that had arisen. He took this moment to heart and asked an autobiographical question at the symposium (the theme of which was "The Autobiographical Animal"): Who am I at this moment? This question guided his thinking about the conference as a whole.
I often ask myself, out of curiosity, who am I? When I'm naked and silent under the gaze of an animal (e.g., a cat), I'm troubled and have to go through a difficult time to overcome this insecurity. So, who am I at this moment, under the gaze of the cat? Who are you following? What is the root cause of this insecurity?
(It's worth noting that in Derrida's case, the word "follow" is very meaningful.) On the one hand, Derrida uses a biblical scene to explain "following", the creator first created the animal, and then created man, man is the "latecomer", and the "latecomer" should follow the "first", but the human being has transgressed his identity and become the owner of the animal; Derrida, on the other hand, was deeply influenced by Levinas, who in Total and Infinite, argues that the "I" in housekeeping should open the house to the other, turn one's possessions into gifts, and turn the home into an inn, putting the needs of the other before the needs of the "I", and the "I" following the other. In Derrida's view, the everyday phrase "after you" when people are waiting for the elevator also has the connotation of original ethics. —Translator's note)
02
Naked humans
Giovanni Lanfranco，Young Naked Man on a Bed with Cat，1620－1622
Derrida does not mention the root cause, but Nietzsche responds to the question: the reason why we are ashamed to be naked in front of others is not because our inner "bestiality" is revealed at such moments, but because "naked human beings are often a shameful spectacle", especially modern Europeans, who are "tame, sick, weak, and disabled animals...... deformed, mutilated, weak, clumsy". Therefore, the "good" Europeans must cover up this shameful animal with clothes and decorate it with morality to make it appear noble and decent.
I think Derrida would agree with Nietzsche. In fact, when Derrida reflects on his own shame, he has already proved Nietzsche's point. He wrote: "Why should you be ashamed? Shame in front of whom? Shame for being naked like an animal. Derrida was ashamed because he found himself naked under the gaze of a cat – a feeling I guess was not unique to Derrida. This shame stems from being naked in front of others, completely exposed like an animal, in other words, naked like a fool.
However, this "quasi-Nietzschean" response raises questions about itself. What does it mean to be "naked like an animal"? Strictly speaking, can we say that animals are naked? Can we say that animals are in nudity? If we assume that animals do not have an understanding of nakedness (and Derrida does not assume that), then why do we feel a sense of shame when we are naked under the gaze of animals?
Derrida points out that it is generally accepted that only human beings can be naked, or that only human beings can exist in the form of nakedness, because only human beings have the understanding of nudity.
We know that humans have a number of unique "characteristics" or attributes that distinguish humans from animals. Here, wearing clothes becomes a fundamental "feature" of human beings. It is often believed that wearing clothes is an exclusive characteristic of human beings, as only humans are ashamed when they are confronted with their own nakedness. The trait of "dressing" forms a structure along with other characteristics that are exclusive to human beings (e.g., rationality, speech, death consciousness, ethics, blooming, etc.). Animals are increasingly encroaching on the uniqueness of human beings, and this structure clearly separates humans from animals.
03
Because of the cat, I am
Alice and the Cheshire Cat
Derrida emphasizes the irreplaceable uniqueness of this cat. If anyone reduced this unique cat to the object of knowledge, whether philosophical or otherwise, Derrida would be against it. Derrida didn't know who he was at the moment when the cat was looking at him, and he didn't know who the cat was at this moment.
His encounter with the cat takes place at an inopportune moment, a chaotic and disjointed moment. This moment precedes understanding and recognition, or it occurs outside the scope of understanding and recognition. In this "unaware" scene, humans find themselves exposed to animals, which is a bit crazy, so Derrida calls this chance shot a "crazy stage effect". He points out that the Cheshire Cat's line from Alice in Wonderland is particularly appropriate to describe the scene: "We're all crazy! I'm crazy, and so are you. ”
Derrida tries to answer the autobiographical question of "who am I?" in this crazy moment, but he is unable to respond appropriately to it "philosophically". This is expected by him, because only by getting rid of madness, returning to oneself, regaining one's senses, and regaining one's composure can the question "Who am I?" can be answered.
In this moment of madness, I am unable to figure out who I am (whether this "me" is the subject, the "I think", the transcendental unity of unity, the transcendental self, or the conscious consciousness) because this "me" is unable to integrate this experience and fully understand the meaning of this experience. Strictly speaking, this "I" can only appear after this crazy moment (i.e., when "I" is exposed to other animals).
Thus, for Derrida, the question of "who am I" seems to require a rather paradoxical answer: "I exist because of the animal I follow", or "Because of the animal around me, therefore I am".
Source of this article: Zoology: The Animal Problem from Heidegger to Derrida, by Matthew · Caraco
This article is transferred from | Silu philosophy