The Non-Human as Such

On Men, Animals, and Barbers

Abstract

The article investigates a dialectic that, through the work of negation, paradoxically brings the non-human as ‘anything but human’ back to the human. It shows how and why, throughout the criticism of all forms of anthropocentrism, the human being still occupies a central place in the very discourse that negates him. His principal position only changed its value from а positive to а negative one. If there is something in common among all possible non-human things in the world, it is their negative determination with regards to the human. While being actively denied, ‘human’ thus remains a main constitutive element of their identity, a kind of general equivalent, whose ontological status is highly problematic and therefore particularly interesting.