Philosophical Ethology of Vinciane Despret
Vinciane Despret is a Belgian philosopher whose work proposes new questions and approaches to human-animal relations. Of central importance to her thought is an intellectual and cultural proposal to allow animals to show their agency and allow them to be interesting. With genuine curiosity, Despret looks at how humans and animals transform one another through daily encounters, and she explores these metamorphoses through an engagement with the history of philosophy, literature, science, field research, and art. In a playful though serious tone, Despret claims that animals are always more interesting than we give them credit for, and that the achievements of animals are never far from our own. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.
Brett Buchanan is Director of the School of the Environment, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada.
Matthew Chrulew is ARC DECRA Research Fellow in the Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
Jeffrey Bussolini is Associate Professor of Sociology-Anthropology at City University of New York, USA.