ABSTRACT
In the specific contexts of animal forms of life, human exceptionalism is a flexible but historically persistent reckoning that singles out “the human” for solitary elevation and apartness, usually by asserting that humans, as such, are distinguished by the possession of a unique, hierarchizing attribute. As Andreas Hofele points out, the “new liberty” offered to humans based on seemingly infinite potential “also launches a profound destabilization” of the human. The humans, both real and fictional, that had been at the centre of critical enquiry at least since Jacob Burckhardt’s work on the Renaissance concept of the individual began to be crowded out by non-humans. Human exceptionalism and its negative expression have become the face of studies of the human and nonhuman alike. Indeed, perhaps the structure of exception— human exceptionalism, negative human exceptionalism, and Shakespearean exceptionalism— is that there is no standing outside.
