Other Temporalities of Life: Zoopoetics and Animal Perspectivism

Abstract

“Animals, who do not think at all, the boa for whom digestion is a matter of long days, the marmot who sleeps all winter, the whale who lives for three hundred years, the seagull who flies for a month without tiring”: these creatures, evoked by Proust in Jean Santeuil, provide examples of relationships to reality and duration that are radically different from those of human beings. Proust, that “expert” in time, is not the only writer to be fascinated by the diversity of animal temporalities—and perhaps by unthinkable forms of extratemporalities. At the very moment of the Sixth Extinction, contemporary writers, by complex and various literary means, are attempting to immerse their readers in other forms of projection into the future. The problem is knowing whether the ark on which the Proustian zoo embarked 120 years ago is still able to float: “For you are dimming, whales! Like enormous lamps. And if you are not going to be there, you and the other beasts, do you think we will be able to find our way in the dark?” (Chris Marker and Mario Ruspoli, Vive la baleine!, Argos Films, 1972)