The article defends a conception of ecology that considers what ecosystems mean not only in themselves but also for themselves. Each living being is thus a message for another living being, and not merely a functional piece in a physical process of energy exchange or in an evolutionary process in which individual reproduction is all that counts. The article deems that the hatred of the animal kingdom characteristic of Western history and the resulting atrophy of our imagination of the living (...) world explain our blindness. The author suggests Westerners should be more open to non-Western ways of thinking, which might help overcome their difficulty in thinking through the existential, ethical and cultural stakes involved in the present collapse of biodiversity. (shrink)

The question of animal cultures has once again become a subject of debate in ethology, and is now one of its most active and problematic areas. One surprising feature of this research, however, is the lack of attention paid to the communications that go on in these complex animal societies, with the exception of mechanisms of social learning. This neglect of communications is all the more troubling because many ethologists are unwilling to acknowledge that animals have cultures precisely because they (...) do not possess language, a refusal therefore on semiotic grounds. In the present article, I show that the biosemiotic approach to animal cultures is, on the contrary, essential to their understanding, even if the complexity of animal communications is far from being well enough understood. I consider that some of the consequences of this approach are very important, in particular the question of whether we can talk about subjects in the case of animals. Alternatively, I suggest that the semiotic approach to animal cultures leads to a discussion of some of the most serious limitations of biosemiotics, particularly when it comes to investigating the status of the interlocutors in a social community, or to taking into account interspecific communications and the social dimension of any biosemiotic interaction - which biosemiotics has for the moment failed to do. Finally I call attention to the importance of animals living in human communities and suggest that this be studied so as to better apprehend the capacities for culture in non-human living organisms. (shrink)

The philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Paul Shepard, while rarely encoun- tering the other, nevertheless prove to be surprisingly complementary. Derrida acknowl- edges the impossibility and necessity of the human/animal frontier, thinking the human/ animal relation in a paradigm of seeing and being seen, conceived in particular in the context of a sphere of the intimate. Shepard's not merely biological but ontological interpretation of evolution argues that humans need animals, not only metabolically but for their mental development. From the positive (...) dependence of the human on the animal follows an infinite debt that can never be repaid; but in attempting to do so lies the responsibility and destiny of the human, that most animal animal. (shrink)

The position of veganism is ulti- mately inconsistent, speciesist and unrealistic. To be human is to fully embrace the fact that our bodies can be formed from other animals. Unlike vegans, carnivores permit themselves to be intoxicated by other animals and take plea- sure in meat eating. Nevertheless, factory farming should be rejected and meat consumed responsibly.

This article provides an extract from the second half of Lestel's book Animality . His book is divided into two parts. In the first part Lestel considers a number of ways in which humans and animals have been represented, particularly with respect to their supposed differences and borderline cases, over the course of Western history. To this end one reads of various depictions, construc- tions, and erasures of animals, including those of feral children, the animal-machines of Des- cartes and company, (...) animals of ethological study, as well as artistic animals, suffering animals, speaking animals, cultural animals, and more. The first part is largely devoted, then, to past representations of animals as seen through Lestel's unique perspective. The second part, much of which is translated here, conveys Lestel's own observations, as developed most explicitly in his concept of “hybrid com- munities” between humans and animals. It is equal parts evolutionary and cultural anthropol- ogy, ethologi.. (shrink)

The use of computers has opened access to complex phenomena for the comprehension of which no operational narrative traditions are available. Notions of “life”, “cognition” and “intelligence” constitute metaphors and procedures for description and understanding that make it possible to discuss these phenomena, however. They represent cognitive resources for scientists. Why do computer scientists “play” at being biologists, and why do they view it as essential to naturalize their artifacts? When this question is taken as the starting point, it becomes (...) possible to outline what an anthropological study of relations to complexity might look like. For “artificial life”, the outcome is a faustian attitude, implying the creation not of life, pure and simple, but of all possible forms of life. Most importantly, this “Godly discourse” goes along with the development of a truly astonishing object — self-modifiable, adaptable and evolutionary mimetic programs. There is no place for these surprising artifacts in the narrative traditions by means of which scholars may describe and account for them. To examine the all-pervasive but constantly denied language-related dimension of experimentation in artificial life, in an attempt to reach a more intimate understanding of how a purely playful technical project may be transformed into a grandiose metaphysical program, points to two major characteristics of such discourse, which have attracted little attention so far: its insistence on staging parallel, manipulatable and acceleratable temporal sequences for the phenomena observed, as well as an obdurate, painstaking will to exclude everything human from these worlds, which must be perfectly and even hermetically sealed off, this being perceived as a precondition for real life. One direct consequence of these radical positions is that they cut off artificial life from its richest heritage, and in particular from its forefathers in the world of art. One major consequence of this research on artificial life is the reformulation of where we cross boundaries in our culture, and rethinking the status of human beings. (shrink)

Biological attention to evolution and animal life has primarily emphasized a filiative approach that, although important, overlooks crucial dimensions highlighted by an ecological approach to animal human societies. Increased attention to singular animals and critical scrutiny of the operating definitions of society and culture indicates that vast dimensions of this area have been overlooked and remain to be studied. It is particularly important to pursue the aspects of signification, meaning, individuation, and subjectivity. Attention to animal human societies, or to animal (...) cultures that develop in the heart of human cultures, shows that humans and animals often form extimate relations based on particular aspects of animal subjectivity. With certain species we share a dense form of intertwining built on natural, cultural, and biographical histories. Beyond that, an argument on biosemiotic grounds maintains that culture is intrinsic to the living. (shrink)

Relations between humans and animals occur under myriad forms and with profound richness. However, taking account of these relations often poses a considerable difficulty. That humans have a strong interest in many other animals, and that humans give rise to a reciprocal interest among many animals, is an important cultural and evolutionary occurrence. Common living and the sharing of territory often give rise to social ties between humans and animals. It is important to study the material dimensions that render possible (...) friendship between species. Distance often complicates the material proximity of these relations. The human voice and music are significant conduits of communication between species. Excessive focus on formal symbolic communication has often occluded the significant affective exchange that takes place between species by means of human voice and language. Music, as explored by Jim Nollman, constitutes a “privileged vector” of interspecies communication. (shrink)

This interview ranges across a number of topics relevant to Dominique Lestel's thought: the history and philosophy of ethology; animal culture; realist-Cartesian and bi-constructivist ethology; biosemiotics; philo- sophical anthropology; animal studies; the other-than-human; veganism; and technology. It touches on thinkers including Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Paul Shepard, and Donna Haraway.

The definition of tool proposed by Beck is still the one referred to in ethology when discussing the question of tool-use in animals, and its pertinence is rarely questioned. However, observations on technical behaviours in animals have multiplied over the last 20 years, and these have profoundly altered our earlier representations. In the present article, we show that Beck's definition is insufficient and that it does not, in fact, work. More generally, we replace a theory of tools with a theory (...) of mediations of actions to account for technical behaviours in animals. We show that a culturally overcharged notion such as that of tool hinders our perception of the diversity and the complexity of tool uses. By speaking of mediations of actions and not of tools, we eliminate the problem of first defining the pertinent object and are free to concentrate on the means by which the animal externalizes its actions and thus procures greater means of acting on these within a group. In so doing, we prepare the ground for a genuine evolutionary understanding of the dynamics of actions within a given animal population. Whereas, with a few exceptions, ethologists have always separated the question of techniques from that of social behaviour, we emphasize the importance of an ecology of mediations of actions for understanding the structure and dynamics of animal societies, in particular by attempting to rethink such notions as “culture” in the perspective of a general analysis of mediations of actions. (shrink)

The article compares the research programs of teaching symbolic language to chimpanzees, pointing on the dichotomy between artificial language vs. ASL, and the dichotomy between researchers who decided to establish emotional relationships between themselves and the apes, and those who have seen apes as instrumental devices. It is concluded that the experiments with the most interesting results have been both with artificial language and ASL, but with strong affiliation between researchers and animal involved in the experiments. The experiments on talking (...) apes are not so much experiments in psycholinguistics (how far can animal learn human language) but wonderful experiments in the communities of communication between human beings and great apes. (shrink)

Biological attention to evolution and animal life has primarily emphasized a filiative approach that, although important, overlooks crucial dimensions highlighted by an ecological approach to animal human societies. Increased attention to singular animals and critical scrutiny of the operating definitions of society and culture indicates that vast dimensions of this area have been overlooked and remain to be studied. It is particularly important to pursue the aspects of signification, meaning, individuation, and subjectivity. Attention to animal human societies, or to animal (...) cultures that develop in the heart of human cultures, shows that humans and animals often form extimate relations based on particular aspects of animal subjectivity. With certain species we share a dense form of intertwining built on natural, cultural, and biographical histories. Beyond that, an argument on biosemiotic grounds maintains that culture is intrinsic to the living. (shrink)

The article suggests that the phylogenic basis for contemporary Western artistic practices lies in a social practice of the distinctive features found in the species, as seen in certain birds and mammals. Using the cases of birdsong, ape-paintings, knot-tying in certain orangutans and the intriguing stone-handling of some monkeys, the article shows that the question of non-human artistic practices is not only largely unexplored, but that contemporary ethology and psychology are still incapable of really tackling the problem. More generally, some (...) of the problems encountered stem from the fact that one conception of the social sciences was constructed in opposition to the animal, leaving the study of the latter to biology. In this perspective, the study of artistic activity in non-human animals is a true challenge for the social sciences of the future. (shrink)

This interview ranges across a number of topics relevant to Dominique Lestel's thought: the history and philosophy of ethology; animal culture; realist-Cartesian and bi-constructivist ethology; biosemiotics; philo- sophical anthropology; animal studies; the other-than-human; veganism; and technology. It touches on thinkers including Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Paul Shepard, and Donna Haraway.

The convergence between ethology and ethnography has significantly transformed studies of animal subjectivity and culture. The future of both fields lies in a cultural zoology that treats animals as subjects partaking in culture. Nonetheless, significant resistance to such an approach exists on each side of the dis- ciplinary divide. Biologists and social scientists content themselves with definitions of culture that prevent them from taking heed of crucial dimensions of it. Beyond that, the very organiz- ation of scholarly knowledge in university (...) disci- plines is predicated upon an absolute split between humans and other animals, with ethol- ogy charged with understanding non-human animal behavior and the social sciences directed almost exclusively to human cultures. The most promising approaches of the present and future rely on a mixture of methods and definitions that challenges and expands the disciplines involved as well as the very understanding of animal life. (shrink)

The dominant post-Enlightenment Western view of animals has seen them as some kind of machine, objects of no true moral significance, which it is permissible to subject to a range of treatments that would never be tolerated if practised on humans. In reality, defenders of animals, rather than being sentimentalists or somehow insufficiently attached to their own species, are far more in accord with scientific evidence and with the best interests of humanity itself. Animals are fundamentally makers and interpreters of (...) meaning. The rejection of anthropomorphism and anecdote, and the illusion of the invisible observer, are the weapons of an ethnocentric positivism that should be rejected in favour of a strong heuristic position regarding the emotions, consciousness and abilities of animals. (shrink)

To the three classic wounds to human narcissism – that of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud – there must be appended a fourth wound: man is not the only subject in the universe. While most philoso- phers are unwilling to accept it, ethological research shows that animals are also subjects; indeed, in human/animal hybrid communities, certain animals can become individuals or even persons. Through animal biography, anec- dotes, and other often disqualified but nonethe- less empirical forms of knowledge, we can come (...) to know these singular animals. (shrink)

This extract from Lestel's Paroles de singes analyses the methodological debates of the research into the linguistic capabilities of great apes. Lestel uncovers the strategic blindness, methodological fumbling, and other “mirror effects” of these experiments, and reflects on the questions of anthropomorphism and common knowledge. Are the apes simulating language; are the ape-researchers simulating results? Parallels with research into artificial intelligence reveal a preoccupation with questions of cognition.

To the three classic wounds to human narcissism – that of Copernicus , Darwin , and Freud – there must be appended a fourth wound: man is not the only subject in the universe. While most philoso- phers are unwilling to accept it, ethological research shows that animals are also subjects; indeed, in human/animal hybrid communities, certain animals can become individuals or even persons. Through animal biography, anec- dotes, and other often disqualified but nonethe- less empirical forms of knowledge, we (...) can come to know these singular animals. (shrink)

An ethnographic case study of a group of neuro-embryologists is described. We focused on the study of uncertainty management and innovation in the reasoning of those experts, tackling a complex, “ill-structured” problem. The problematics of uncertainty become a tool for investigating the dynamics of distributed reasoning in a natural setting. During the research task, the sequence of predefined methods, which constitute the loosely planned portion of the subjects' cognitive process, is studied: it emerges that the contextual contingencies gave rise to (...) unforeseen strategies. The field study of “thought in action” requires examining the process of problem-generation as well as problem-solving. (shrink)