ABSTRACT
Emmanuel Levinas, in his short essay, 'I am thinking of Bobby', explains 'The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights'. It stands out among Levinas's work as his only explicit attempt to address the ethical question posed by nonhuman animals. This chapter engages in some meandering of its own, winding its way to an exploration of how and why Bobby is uniquely equipped to queer Levinas's concept of the human. Several critics have argued that Bobby presents an especially potent challenge to Levinasian humanism, which reserves full subjectivity for the human alone. In 'thinking of Bobby', Levinas draws attention to both the inadequacies of traditional models of conceptualising the human/dog relationship and the challenge of rethinking this relationship in light of these limitations. Co-evolutionary theory suggests that dogs, having shaped the human both literally and conceptually, are uniquely positioned to challenge these normative schemes, yet this potential is lost when we fail to take dogs literally.
