The Animal That Therefore I Am

The Animal That Therefore I Am

Cover of the first English-language edition
Author	Jacques Derrida
Original title	L'animal que donc je suis
Translator	David Wills
Language	French
Subject	Philosophy
Publisher	Éditions Galilée, Fordham University Press (English translation)
Publication date	2006
Publication place	France
Published in English	2008
Media type	Print
Pages	176 (English translation with translator's notes)
ISBN	978-0-8232-2791-4 (English-language edition)

The Animal That Therefore I Am (French: L'Animal que donc je suis) is a book based on the ten-hour address on the subject of "the autobiographical animal" given by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida at the 1997 Cerisy Conference and subsequently published as a long essay under the title, "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More To Follow)". The book has gained notability as signalling Derrida's turn to questions surrounding the ontology of nonhuman animals, the ethics of animal slaughter and the difference between humans and other animals. Derrida's lecture has come to be a foundational text in Animal Studies within the fields of literary criticism and critical theory.^[1] Whilst the text is often seen as marking the "animal turn" in Derrida's oeuvre, Derrida himself said that his interest in animals was in fact present in his earliest writings.^[2]