Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human (review)

In Animal Lessons, Oliver carries on work that Derrida took up in The Animal that Therefore I Am and analyzes how Continental philosophies relate to nonhuman beings. Like Derrida, but this time including him, the author shows that philosophers of otherness remain very traditional in their relation to nonhumans, calling upon animals only insofar as they nurture reflection on humanity. In opposition to the distinction between humans and nonhumans that these philosophers cannot resolve to give up, Oliver underscores the extent to which we rely on nonhumans for the intimate experience she calls "animal pedagogy." Her thesis is close to Bruno Latour's argument, in We Have Never Been Modern, about the gap between what Westerners claim to do and what they actually do. It is unfortunate, therefore, that Oliver has not taken into consideration the work of Continental thinkers like Vinciane Despret and Latour, who, exceptionally, have departed from the Continental mode and its distinction between humans and nonhumans. Latour and Despret, as much as Oliver, call for an ethical reconsideration of how animals and humans can together create a common world.