A " animalistic turn " in anthropology ?

Social anthropology has always included nature and animals in its field of study, since every society always maintains material or ideal relations with them, and they are thus an integral part of human communities. Over the past two or three decades, however, the exploration of human-animal relations has developed to the point of constituting a specialized field of research. Anthropologists can usefully look back on their own work to reflect on this phenomenon. There is no doubt that this recent interest is a result of the conjunction, in Western societies, between a certain impoverishment of the acquaintance and knowledge of animals, and the development of life sciences, particularly ethological and cognitivist approaches, which willingly extend culture to the animal kingdom. As a result, the differences between humans and animals are tending to blur, reviving the philosophical reflections and moral concerns that inspired the first animal protection movements in the ^18th and ^19th centuries, albeit with markedly different orientations and arguments. Can we then speak of an "animalistic turn", understood both as a political and moral position in defense of animals, and as an epistemological position postulating a continuity between humans and animals by giving the latter a subjectivity or "agency"? Are these two perspectives necessarily linked? To what extent does interest in the "Animal" contribute to knowledge of animals as well as of human beings in society, and to knowledge of the diversity and complexity of living together? Can it constitute an object of study in its own right? Are methodological approaches guided, and if so, how, by forms of commitment to what is now called "the animal question"? Do they lead to metaphysical positions that articulate living forms in new ways? This colloquium does not set out to add a contribution to the numerous events and works that have proliferated over the last decade on the theme of "Man and the Animal" or, less often, "Man and Animals". On the contrary, it aims to put them into perspective, by adopting a reflexive detour on the meaning, implications and scope of these themes, in contemporary societies and in anthropology itself, considered in its borders with philosophy, cognitive science, morality and politics.