A review of Être bête

Abstract

In this book, Despret and Porcher attempt to disassemble the 'scientific' discourse of the difference between humans and animals by showing the types of methodological choices that cause it. Up until the twentieth century the discourse on the difference between humans and animals was not supported by disciplines such as Comparative Psychology and Ethology, which were consolidated academically by way of cutting off relations with practices in which the question of human specificity was and still is simply irrelevant. This refers to the practices of stockbreeders and those who raise animals.Here the relationship with other species appears as a relationship between beings that have a capacity for agency. At the beginning of the twentieth century Zootechnics served as a bridge between the practices of animal breeders and Comparative Psychology. Zootechnics industrialized the relationship between animals and their breeders. Comparative Psychology and Ethology tried to make sure that everything the animal does is predictable. This determinism was looked for by Psychology in the laboratory, where there is no room for subjective relationships with the animals. Lorenz founded Ethology by distancing himself from the laboratory and treating his animals as subjects, but along with Tinbergen he needed to elaborate a scientific discourse and they turned to mechanical analogies in order to develop explanatory models of behaviour. The amiable spirit of nineteenth-century naturalism was given up in favour of an unpleasant conception of animals as mere instruments of scientific reason.The authors of the book approach modern breeders as heirs of a tradition that has not lost sight of subjective relationships with other species. The main part of the book is dedicated to showing what various European breeders have said about the difference between human beings and animals. They search for human specificity in more complex and nuanced answers than the 'scientific' discourse that bases this difference in some quality and whether animals have it or not. Despret and Porcher denounce the fact that the difference between man and the rest of the animals is habitually formed by assuming human uniqueness and defining the characteristics of the animals by what they are unable to do and what man is. However this standardized formulation has much academic vice. Despret and Porcher prefer to present the question to the interviewees in an open format. The participants in the interview complied with this beyond expectations and were able to deconstruct the theoretical bias inherent in the problem. The question was more like a small discourse that ended up something like this: 'According to you as a farmer, how should we think about the question of the [difference between man and animal] so that it could be of interest to those of us who study it and so that we r