Per un'ontologia antispecista

This contribution argues that an antispeciesist ethics requires an ontological foundation capable of justifying the overturning of ordinary practices of exploitation of non-human animals. Against the humanist axiom that ties moral dignity to logos and self-consciousness, the article shows how this criterion produces exclusions internal to "humanity" itself and fuels hierarchies. Taking the Benthamian question concerning suffering as a turning point, the discussion employs the Derridean tools of trace and différance to describe auto-affection as a general structure of the living: the self is always constituted as auto-hetero-affection, in vulnerability and in exposure to the other. On this basis, the notion of auto-zoo-graphy — of writing oneself as a living being — is proposed as a minimal ontological criterion for ethical inclusion: worthy of consideration is the entity capable of constituting itself as a self in the world through traces that render it exposed to wounding, pain, and loss, on this side of the human/animal distinction.