The post animal. Life forms hybridized by technoscience

Abstract

Taking into account the current work about the place of animals in our contemporary Western societies, this article introduces a new category, that of the post-animal, and demonstrates, through the use of fictional examples, that the post-animal does not fit into the continuity of the animal-object and the animal-subject, but operates a step backward, transanimalism assimilating the animal to a “sub-machine”. The article takes into account the work of contemporary philosophers interested in the living and the work of jurists investing the post-animal with language and institutional forms capable of defending it. The writers Phoebe Hadjimarkos Clarke (Aliène, 2004), Vincent Message (Défaite des maîtres et possesseurs, 2015), and Emmanuelle Pireyre (Chimère 2019) add to different researches in the field a narratological work which is specific for the fictions of the “post-”.