Abstract

In the history ofWestern thought the “animal” is a general idea devoid of the details ofparticularity. Whitehead poses a nuanced challenge to us: how to perceive each abstract “animal” as a concrete body. To become “bad with names” is an invitation to exchange reductionist designations with new language for individual creatures that populate the amorphous category of “animal.” Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari, along with Whitehead, suggest ways in which we might understand the idea that there are no “animals,” only radically particular bodies.