The human-animal divide in communication: anthropocentric, posthuman and integrationist answers

Abstract

The human-animal relation has mainly been negotiated one way or another – a humanist/anthropocentric approach which centralizes the human condition and a posthuman perspective which sees the human perspective as a hindrance to fully comprehending the nonhuman world. By exploring the humanist and posthuman discourse on the human-animal divide in communication, this paper contends that both approaches are subject to the “language myth”. At the end, an integrationist-humanist answer to the human-animal divide will be proffered, which constitutes a form of humanism that neither relies on decontextualized conceptions of human communication nor inhibits personal sign-making creativity, thereby marking a point of departure from said humanist and posthuman models.