BOBBY BETWEEN DELEUZE AND LEVINAS, OR ETHICS BECOMING-ANIMAL

Emmanuel Levinas's cryptic but heartfelt essay “The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights” has perplexed critics seeking to integrate it within his humanist philosophy. While most critics focus on Levinas's anthropocentric limitations, this paper proposes a reading of Levinas's encounter with a dog, Bobby, as a moment of becoming-animal. Reading “The Name of a Dog” through Deleuze and Guattari's concept generates a complex set of questions for assessing the continuing importance of Levinasian ethics and the current state of animal studies as it confronts biopolitical violence.