INTERANIMALITY AND ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF HUMAN-ANIMAL RELATIONS

The paper deals with three interrelated dimensions of human-animal relations (HARs) so as to provide a general phenomenological framework for the analysis of our being-with-animals. It focuses on interspecies intercorporeality (1) that is predetermined by societal significations and practices (2). However, these habituated practices and social constructions can be potentially thwarted by the event of a singular encounter that interrupts and disturbs our practice of "human-animal normality" (3). First, based on Husserl 's and Merleau-Ponty's reflections on empathy and intersubjectivity, the text focuses on co-existence construed as intercorporeality and interanimality. 'The paper interprets the status of interanimality as primordial habitual bodily being-with comprising of communication and mutual influence between humans and animals. It builds a co-existence we are always already immersed in. Second, differentiated significations of animals exist by virtue of habituated and incorporated practices of differentiation between humanity and animality, of different tacit processes through which we separate "us" from "them". This is manifest in the diversity of HARs - some of the animals are closer to us (particularly pets which are sometimes even humanized) than others (livestock, pests) - culminating in a selective recognition of animals as partners in mutual communication and addressees of moral concerns. Our perceptions of, and actions towards, animals are co-determined by embodied structures of tacit recognizability (Butler). On the level of habituation, we are used to treat animals differently, be it as "edibles", "family members" or "data providers" (in animal experiments), with different practical and moral implications. Third, this recognizability is potentially interrupted by singular animal encounters. Levinas and Derrida describe a way of "being-addressed" in the (bodily) encounter that exceeds the normality and normativity of patterns of recognition and of practical routines in dealing with animals. 'Thus, drawing on Merleau-Ponty 's distinction between the "habituated lived body" and the "body at this moment", encounters as actual intercorporeal resonance have the potential of disturbing, exceeding and changing the recognizability and habituated interanimality.