ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter dwells on Agamben’s notion of the “anthropological machine”—the device by which man is produced against his allegedly animal nature—and addresses two issues that Agamben’s analysis has left unexplored: namely, the consequences the anthropological machine implies for the life of animals and the strategies one needs to adopt in order to render the machine inoperative, for the sake of both human and non-human animals. It is argued that to dismantle this “othering machine” and to undo the traditional boundary between human and animal, one should embark on a difficult but rewarding journey of self-displacement and defamiliarization. Three anti-anthropocentric exercises are suggested. The first consists in placing humans at the margins of the history (both in the sense of human history and in the sense of the narrative plot), while bringing other co-protagonists into the foreground. The second shifts the focus onto the human-animal relationship, while exploring the devices that allow, mediate, or prevent a genuine encounter. Finally, the third addresses the possibility of grasping and portraying animals’ lives, minds, and language, while bearing in mind that this “translation process” is necessarily open-ended and fraught with traps.
