ABSTRACT
Thus, this is a history of the modern other. As contemporary critics have remarked, the history is then not animality discussed in the plural, but of a category more hybrid, more unstable, and more labelled by the human culture whose reverse it represents. This is perhaps more than ever pointed out in the moments when the practitioners of the theory tried to get rid of this quality; such is the lesson proved by the history that followed in Darwinism’s wake, and that in one way or the other culminated in the black years of Surrealism; when the human-animal borderline was truly brought into question, the primitive, black forces behind the civilized habits were highlighted—the ethical other, once again.
