« Comment peut-on être cochon ? » : darwinisme et conscience chez Darrieussecq
The confluence of cognitive science and Darwinian theory has produced a wealth of fascinating research in recent decades, often enthusiastically embraced by the humanities, and given rise to the new disciplines of evolutionary psychology and neurophenomenology. Darrieussecq’s interest in human and non-human cognition makes her work a site of exploration for several issues related to these fields of research. Her characters speculate on the inner lives and perceptual worlds of dogs, cats and insects. The narrative focalization of her story will leap unexpectedly from a human consciousness into that of a sea-lion or a basking shark. And, most famously, in Darrieussecq’s debut novel we follow the narrator’s subjectivity as she metamorphoses between human and pig form and states undecidably in-between, during which process, we gradually realize, it is not only her physical form that is shifting but her mentality as well. This article examines how Darrieussecq’s exploration of animal consciousness and its relation to the human not only serves as a metaphor for intersubjectivity and the unknowable mind of the other, but also offers a meditation on the nature of humanity and of its place within an evolutionary spectrum of differently adapted minds.