Animals Give Us a Body We Didn't Have. An Interview with Vinciane Despret

The following piece is a conversation on how the dead, animals, and people animate each other. We interviewed Vinciane Despret in French, via Zoom, on May 2, 2024; Vinciane was in Brussels, Iwona was in Prague, and Stephen was in Sydney. Despret is not only a key figure in ethology and animal studies because of her empirical studies, her work also has strong philosophical implications. We explore how her work is not just contributing to these fields but changing what she calls our “cognitive routines,” which means deploying sensitive practices of defamiliarizing those routines, listening to what those who “cannot speak” have to say, in particular, in this interview, animals and the dead. Going beyond human language, we discover ways of “feeling the world,” or rather the worlds, of particular beings. By turning to “stories of anticipation,” Despret offers an alternative take on the question of species extinction. Vinciane Despret, Iwona Janicka and Stephen Muecke (2025):“Animals Give Us a Body We Didn’t Have. An Interview with Vinciane Despret.” Environmental Humanities 17(3) 705–712. doi.org/10.1215/22011919-11942118