Humans among the Other Animals: Planetarity, Responsibility, and Fiction in Disgrace and Wolf Totem

Abstract

This paper stages readings of several fictional and non-fictional explorations of the relation of man and animal, of limits, obligations, and sympathy, as well as larger ecological questions around creatureliness and planetarity. I argue for a reassessment, via Agamben’s by now familiar gloss on Heidegger’s discussion of the animal, of an ineradicable creatureliness internal to the human, and then show what coming to terms with this means more broadly in ethical life. Finally, I insist on the role of fiction in the training of the imagination, a priming for the sort of ethical experience essential to good or right life.