Morbidity and Vitalism: Derrida, Bergson, Deleuze, and Animal Film Imagery

摘要

Let us begin with death. It is difficult to avoid the presence of death, killing, and sacrifice at all levels of inquiry into animal representation. Within this arena of morbidity the animal symbol or image is understood not so much as a sign of absence, or nonpresence, but as a symptom of a deeper and more permanent loss. John Berger has famously exemplified this in his account of the disappearance or radical alienation of animals under capitalism. Furthermore, this is intensified by the idea that the symbolic networks that determine the relative status of living beings find their key dividing lines created and reinforced by the act of sacrifice: killing as the ground of difference.