Winter 2001
Volume 28, Number 2

Autobiography, the writing of the self as living, the trace of the living for itself, being for itself, being for itself, the auto-affection or auto-infection as memory or archive of the living would be an immunizing movement (a movement of safety, of salvage and salvation of the safe, the holy, the immune, the indemnified, of virginal and intact nudity), but an immunizing movement that is always threatened with becoming auto-immunizing, as is every autos, every ipseity, every automatic, automobile, autonomous, auto-referential movement. Nothing risks becoming more poisonous than an autobiography; poisonous for itself in the first place, auto-infectious for the presumed signatory who is so auto-affected.

Ecce animot-- that is what I was saying before this long digression. In order not damage French ears too sensitive to spelling and grammar I won't repeat the word animot too often. I'll do it several times but each time that, henceforth, I say the animal [l'animal] or the animals [animaux] I'll be asking you to silently substitute animot for what you hear. By means of the chimera of this singular word, the animot. I bring together three heterogenous elements within a single verbal body.

1. I would like to have the plural of animals heard in the singular. There is no animal in the general singular, separated from man by a single indivisible limit. We have to envisage the existence of "living creatures" whose plurality cannot be assembled within the single figure of an animality that is simply opposed to humanity. This does not of course mean ignoring or effacing everything that separates humankind from the other animals, creating a single large set, a single great, fundamentally homogenous and continuous family tree going from the animot to the homo (faber, sapiends, or whatever else). That would be an asinanity, even more so to suspect anyone here doing just that. I won't therefore devote another second to the double stupidity of that suspicion, even if, alas, it is quite widespread. I repeat that it is rather a matter of taking into account a multiplicity of heterogeneous structures and limits. Among non-humans and separate from nonhumans there is an immense multiplicity of other living things that cannot in any way be homogenized, except by means of violence and willful ignorance, within the category of what is called the animal or animality in general. From the outset there are animals and, let's say, l'animot. The confusion of all nonhuman living creatures within the general and common category of the animal is not simply a sin against rigorous thinking, vigilance, lucidity, or empirical authority; it is also a crime. Not a crime against animality precisely, but a crime of the first order against the animals, against animals. Do we agree to presume that every murder, every transgression of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" concerns

See Also Gilles Deleuze: Literature and Life (Winter 1997) Susan McHugh: Marrying My Bitch: J. R. Ackerley's Pack Sexualities (Fall 2000) Jonathan Lamb: Modern Metamorphoses and Disgraceful Tales (Fall 2001)

only man (a question to come) and that in sum there are only crimes "against humanity?"

2. The suffix mot in l'animot should bring us back to the word, namely, to the word named a noun [nommé nom]. It opens onto the referential experience of the thing as such, as what it is in its being, and therefore to the reference point by means of which one has always sought to draw the limit, the unique and indivisible limit held to separate man from animal, namely the word, the nominal language of the word, the voice that names and that names the thing as such, such as it appears in its being (as in the Heideggerian moment in the demonstration that we are coming to). The animal would in the last instance be deprived of the word, of the word that one names a noun or name.

3. It would not be a matter of "giving speech back" to animals but perhaps of acceding to a thinking, however fabulous and chimerical it might be, that thinks the absence of the name and of the word otherwise, as something other than a privation.

Ecce animot, that is the announcement of which I am (following) something like a trace, assuming the title of an autobiographical animal, in the form of a risky, fabulous, or chimerical response to the question "But me, who am I?" and that I have bet on treating as that of the autobiographical animal. Assuming that title, which is itself somewhat chimerical, might surprise you. It brings together two times two alliances, as unexpected as they are irrefutable.

Jacques Derrida is director of studies at the École des Hautes Études, Paris, and visiting professor at University of California, Irvine, New York University, and the New School for Social Research. His The Work of Mourning, translated by Michael Naas and Pascale-Anne Brault was published this year and three books are forthcoming: Without Alibi, Who's Afraid of Philosophy? and Negotiations. David Wills is professor of French and English and chair of the department of languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Albany (SUNY). He has published a number of books, including Prosthesis(1995). He is also the translator of Derrida's Gift of Deathand Right of Inspectionas well as the forthcoming La Contre-allée. Current projects include a volume of essays on Derrida and a book on jazz.