The guest at Le Carré – Kaoutar Harchi, “The animal and us”

In his essay So the animal and us published in September 2024 by Actes Sud, sociologist Kaoutar Harchi calls with striking force to tear the notion of species from biology, in the same way as was done with the concepts of race and gender. By mixing history, theory and personal or even autobiographical narrative, she produces work that can be described as sensitive theory.
“The particularity of my relationship to the animal question is that I come neither through philosophy, nor through ethics or biology, but through the racial question.”

The early awakening of a social conscience

Kaoutar Harchi grew up in a working-class environment in a large housing estate district of Strasbourg. In the autobiographical investigation As we exist (Actes Sud, 2021), she told in detail the story of her family from Moroccan immigration as well as her youth in Eastern France. Her parents, true “strategists of her existence” ensured that she took the right path in life by placing her in a private, Catholic educational institution of good reputation. This “school exile”, far from assimilating him to a legitimate dominant culture, had the fundamental effect of reinforcing his original and intimate affiliations. Marked by experiences of racial discrimination, in a political context where young people in the neighborhoods suffered insults and police violence, she experienced the making of summons at a very young age.

In the show, she explains: “I have often expressed myself on these questions of class defector, social mobility, etc. It is often presented as a form of dream, of aspiration, which I can totally understand. But in my case, I experienced it and I don't get any particular feelings from it in terms of emancipation or liberation, it's something that I fight for, I plead for. a classless society. of ascension or this idea of ​​a defector, for me it is more to be criticized than to be hoped for. It is not desirable for me.

“Of these scenes where animals burst into our lives”

In his story, Kaoutar Harchi interweaves his personal memories which become both roots and echoes of his thoughts. She says that as a child, she saw her friend Mustapha, aged “five, six years old”, get bitten by a police dog while he was playing outside. The animal is in turn targeted by the neighborhood residents who react and call to “kill this dog who is attacking our kids”. In return, the police tell them “It’s you dogs, it’s you who we’re going to die.” A scene of confusion where we can wonder who the animals are? Who are humans?

“By howling you are dogs, what the police officers caused was the fall of Mustapha towards the animal world. (…) The domination of humans over animals is in no way a closed domination over itself but, on the contrary, an open domination, which opens onto another: the domination of humans over others. other humans. Because it is indeed humans who cause other humans to fall at every moment.” she writes in So the animal and us. It then happens that the boundary between human and animal species becomes blurred. And men, most often dominant, come to question the humanity of certain others, relegated to an animal status, associated with animal names: “Rat, bicot (which means kid), mongoose (…) , vermin, viper. »

Furthermore, colonial, capitalist and sexist systems feed on animalization in their mechanisms. To become aware of this, some enlightening examples among many others are developed by the guest: the Atlantic slave trade, the exhibition of Saartjie Baartman (known in Europe as the Hottentot Venus), the force-feeding of the suffragettes, the work at the chain inspired by the dismemberment of animals in slaughterhouses, the omnipresent animality in sexist insults: cows, female dogs, sows…

Animals, to be considered as our equals

Kaoutar Harchi considers that we all carry a form of internalized speciesism and that all representations around animals construct a hierarchy between the human species and the animal species. She calls for working on myths and bringing about “animal time”. She also poses a challenge to intersectional approaches: thinking of the social order as what she calls a “ zoosocial order”.

Because the idea that after all, granting a form of moral status to animals is not that necessary is still the one that largely dominates. However, according to Kaoutar Harchi, so-called humanist positions must be re-studied in the light of animalization. Finally, it is necessary to reevaluate the fact that we eat animals by asking ourselves not “who eats what but who eats whom”.“It is we, humans, who are linked to animals through suffering by making them suffer. If then the animals suffer from us, the least morality is to consent to suffer with them and the greatest is to no longer make them suffer.”

Many women are committed to the animal cause, there is even an over-representation in this struggle, with very well-known names, such as Louise Michel for example, who made a feminist proposal to extend the moral community to animals. Kaoutar Harchi specifies at the microphone of Mathieu Vidard: “She proposed a lot of things, it is a policy today that we could describe as both revolutionary and profoundly generous, that is to say consider that the concern for the good of others is not limited only to members of the species homo sapiens.”

To find out more, listen to the show….