Metamorfozės: filosofija ir gyvūniškumas
LTStraipsnyje keliamas klausimas, kodėl gyvūniškumo tema tampa tokia svarbi būtent šiuolaikinėje filosofijoje. Ar Michelio Foucault ir Giorgio Agambeno suformuluota biopolitikos samprata nekeičia paties žmogaus apibrėžimo, neperstumia ribos, skiriančios žmogiškumą ir gyvūniškumą? Ar esama ryšio tarp šios ribos kismo trajektorijos ir vis labiau įsigalėjančio kapitalizmo? Kaip biopolitikos ir kapitalizmo kontekste galime interpretuoti Gilles’io Deleuze’o ir Felixo Guattari raginimą tapti gyvūnu? Ar šis raginimas rodo visišką racionalaus subjektyvumo ir politiškumo pabaigą, ar, priešingai, nesubjektyvaus, neliberalaus politinio veiksmo galimybę?.
ENWhat does the theme of the animal mean for philosophy? Aristotle’s definition ‘Man is by nature a rational animal’ in fact suggests that human is an animal plus rationality (differentia specifica), that human is not radically different from the animal. Another Aristotle’s definition, according to which man is zoon politicon, is even more important for our discussion, while here man is discussed in the context of the connection between animality and the political. This definition implies an idea that animality is always at stake in the political and becomes a center of political manipulations. Political power is certainly concerned not with animals, but with the distinction between humanity and animality in a human being. This concern with and calculations of human animality caused the emergence of what Michel Foucault calls bio-politics. Bio-politics means the regulation of biological processes, the management of the body, which becomes a central element in capitalist regime. Giorgio Agamben develops the notion of bio-politics even further saying that the production of bio-political body is the central aim of sovereign power. According to Agamben, modern politics is defined by the fact that the biological, natural, bare life, which was always on the margins of the political, starts to coincide with the sphere of the political. Modern power is represented not in terms of human rights and free will, but by constant concern for and control of bare life.The notion of bio-politics enables us to reconsider the question of the division between humanity and animality. How can we interpret in this context the notion of becoming-animal, invented by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari? In their two volumes, entitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as well as psychoanalysis as a repressive system, which seeks to restrict the incessant flow of desire. In order to break this system they propose a general theory of becoming, of molecular transformations. These becomings are of different nature: it is becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-music, becoming-imperceptible. Why these sorts of becomings are important to Deleuze and Guattari? What does it mean to become an animal? Becoming-animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that human being does not „really” become an animal. In the book Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature Deleuze and Guattari argue that becoming-animal turns into the political action. So if for Aristotle man was an animal with additional capacity for political action, for Deleuze and Guattari becoming-animal already means the political. In this context their insightful interpretations of Kafka’s ‘animal stories’ could be viewed as a critique of what Foucault and Agamben named as bio-power.
