Session 4: To Kill or Not to Kill?
Moderator: Antoine Lilti (Collège de France)
Abstract
Hunting prey from among 15,000 species of vertebrates, humans are today the planet’s primary predator, far ahead of lions, wolves, or sharks. Today, 94% of the biomass of non-human mammals consists of domesticated animals—that is, farmed prey. Yet this mega-predator is singularly ill-equipped physiologically: it has no large canines or claws, nor a powerful sense of smell. Humans have, however, developed a trans-species empathy that allows them to employ cunning, mimicry, and manipulation of their prey’s environment to the point of domestication. The ability to put oneself in the place of other animals allows humans to deceive them, but it also gives rise to forms of attachment unique in the living world, such as nursing bear cubs, puppies, or tamed peccaries, or ritual identification with animals. As an empathetic predator, humans paradoxically feed on beings they view as alter egos. This emotional and moral conflict has elicited a wide variety of responses in human societies, depending on the type of social organization: dietary taboos, rituals of thanksgiving or apology, or even the delegation and concealment of violence in slaughterhouses. Whether glorified, stigmatized, or industrialized, violence against animals proves to be a powerful source of social hierarchy and historical transformation.
Charles Stépanoff
Charles Stépanoff is an anthropologist and director of studies at EHESS, specializing in the indigenous peoples of Siberia. He has studied the relationships between Siberian communities and animals in shamanic ritual practices, pastoral livestock rearing, hunting, and domestication. Following research on hunting in France and the history of domestication, he currently leads a research program on the coevolution of human community practices, wildlife behavior, and landscapes, based on fieldwork. His publications include: *Voyager dans l’invisible. Techniques chamaniques de l’imagination* (La Découverte, 2019), *L’animal et la mort. Hunting, Modernity, and the Crisis of the Wild (La Découverte 2021), *Attachments: An Inquiry into Our Bonds Beyond the Human* (La Découverte 2024); and co-edited with archaeozoologist Jean-Denis Vigne, *Hybrid Communities: Biosocial Approaches to Domestication and Other Trans-species Relationships* (Routledge 2018).
