The philosopher thus decided to proceed in the same way, by observing scientists ‘who render the animals interesting. Because there is more of a chance of making the animals and humans interesting by analysing them through what they do best. But it is true that in the book I adopt a liberty of tone which allows me to say, from time to time, ‘this isn’t working’.’

Certain chapters are thus more biting. Such as the one devoted to the letter ‘K’, for ‘Kilos,’ in which the author wonders why we continue to quantify in weight the number of dead animals each year. Even if the term ‘kilo’ is supposed to contribute to a calling into question of the industrialisation of breeding (doesn’t Donna Haraway remind us that the most frequent form of relationship humans have with an animal is in killing it?), the use of this word, according to her, means precisely that now ‘the animals are no longer bred but produced as consumer goods.’

Experimental folly

In ‘Separations’ (Can an animal be led to break down?), Vinciane Despret does not miss the opportunity to give vent to how strongly she feels about the experimental obsession of a psychologist like Harry Harlow, who, in trying to understand the food preferences of rats which have not yet been weaned (rather cow’s milk or other liquids?) ended up subjecting these young rodents to what others would term torture. In trying to confirm that rats cease feeding themselves if they are not in the presence of their mother, Harlow didn’t hesitate to starve the mothers to see if they preferred to head towards food or their young offspring once released from the cage. Then, still in order to confirm his hypothesis, he ended up blinding them, removing their ovaries, extracting their olfactory bulbs. The history would subsequently be repeated with young rhesus macaques, through the well known experiment of a steel dummy and a fabric dummy aiming to prove to what extent contact is a basic need.

‘Withdrawing, separating, mutilating, extracting, depriving. [...] The experiment of separation does not end with separating living beings from one another; it consists of destroying, dismembering and, above all, removing. As if this was the only act that can be accomplished,’ writes the researcher. ‘[...] These theories finally come down to only one thing: a systematic and blind exercise in irresponsibility.’

On reading such acerbic language, do not however imagine that Vinciane Despret is claiming the position of a militant. ‘I am not a champion of the animal cause,’ she states. ‘What interests me as a philosopher is knowing what that changes from an ontological point of view, all the time knowing that ontology has practical and concrete effects: how we extend this idea of human exceptionalism, for example, with these experiments, in theory and in practice. Thus human exceptionalism, this idea according to which ‘they are only animals’ does a lot of harm, whose scale we are only just starting to gauge. In encourages an instrumental view of the world and living beings. If you go looking for what defines what is important for scientists, whoever they might be, you discover that each parcel of knowledge defines itself as an opportunity to change something in the world. I am a researcher, and I am a philosopher, and as such I am looking for how to provide back-up guidance for these changes of the world; supporting these changes also means giving them a chance, if they seem to me to make this world a little less uninhabitable, less unjust, less disconnected and more civilized. Thus, I might say, certain experiments turn us into monstrous beings, which leave a better world no chance.’

And that could take the path of epistemology; in any case it is through there that Vinciane Despret is trying to take it. Through asking for another way of ‘doing science.’ A more human, less arrogant, manner. ‘We have to ask ourselves if carrying out certain experiments is really worth the cost. Is it really worth verifying such or such a hypothesis? We have to accept that there exist things which we cannot know…’