Seminar in French Civilization: Thinking With Animals

A study of the 'animal question' in French literature and philosophy from Montaigne to Derrida and beyond. Lévi-Strauss noted, famously, that animals were good to 'think with,' and we try to do so here - looking at fables, novels, poems, and philosophical texts - while avoiding their reification into mere things or symbols in the 'anthropological machine' (Agamben). But we can also try to 'think (along) with' non-human animals, as J.-C. Bailly suggests, and, more urgently, interrogate their enigmatic presence anew against the backdrop of the sixth extinction. Topics: fables, language, mind, rights, conservation, companionship, extinction.