Doing History with Animals

Belgian philosopher Vinciane Despret considers how we can understand animals not only as subjects of history, but as historical actors in their own right.

In recent years, a growing number of historians have deliberately rejected a study of history focused exclusively on human beings and begun researching the conditions through which animals can be understood not only as subjects of history, but as historical actors in their own right.

These historians recognize the inherent difficulties such research entails, and the historical redefinitions it requires. At the same time, doing history with animals is seen as necessary and urgent in this period of dangerous threat to so many living beings, human and non-human alike. It is probably not coincidental that this history is emerging as the consequences of global warming progressively impact living beings for whom the only History previously told is that of the long, cold history of evolution, whereas now they are experiencing a “warming” of their History.

Vinciane Despret is a Belgian philosopher at the University of Liège and the Free University of Brussels. She is considered to be a foundational thinker in the field of animal studies. Like Bruno Latour, Vinciane Despret interrogates fundamental concepts like “society,” “self,” and “other.” Her innovative ethological methodologies in animal studies and environmental humanities elaborate the practical ways in which humans can engage with nonhumans, thereby transforming each other. In this process, other worlds emerge and take shape, demanding that humanities, as much as the sciences, take notice.

Despret has published numerous works including several translated into English: What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? (translated by Brett Buchanan, 2016, University of Minnesota Press); The Dance of the Arabian Babbler (translated by Jeffrey Bussolini, 2021, University of Minnesota Press); Our Grateful Dead (translated by Steven Muecke, 2021, University of Minnesota Press); and Living As A Bird (2022, Polity). Her other books include Dieu, Darwin, tout et n’importe quoi; Le chez soi des animaux; and Autobiographie d’un poulpe. Despret was the scientific consultant for the 2007 exposition Bêtes et Hommes in Paris and author of the exposition catalog published by Gallimard, and of another exposition in the Belgian pavilion of the Biennale d’architecture in Venice in 2023. She was awarded the Moron Prize from the Académie Française for her body of work, and became a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium in 2024.

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