Vinciane Despret

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Vinciane Despret
Belgian philosopher of science
Born12 November 1959[1]
Brussels[1]
OccupationAssociate professor at University of Liège
Notable workOur emotional Makeup. Ethnopsychology and Selfhood

Vinciane Despret (born November 12, 1959) is a Belgian philosopher of science. She is an associate professor at the University of Liège and also teaches at the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Career[edit]

Vinciane Despret first graduated in philosophy before studying psychology. She graduated in 1991 and is now most known for having provided a reflexive account on ethologists, observing babblers in the Negev desert and the way they would interpret those birds' complex dance moves.[a]

She is considered to be a foundational thinker in what has now become the field of animal studies.[b] More generally, at the heart of her work lies the question of the relationship between observers and the observed during the conduct of scientific research.

Despret affiliates herself to such critical thinkers in philosophy and anthropology of science as Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour. She undertakes a critical understanding of how science is fabricated, following scientists doing fieldwork and the way they actively create links and specific relationships to their objects of study.

Personal life[edit]

Despret was born in Brussels.

She is married to Jean-Marie Lemaire, a psychiatrist who works partly in Turin. They have one child, Jules-Vincent.

Selected works[edit]

  • The Body We Care for: Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis, Body & Society, 2004, 10 (2-3): 111–134.[2]
  • Our Emotional Makeup. Ethnopsychology and Selfhood. New York: Other Press, 2004.[3]
  • "Sheep do have opinions", in Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, 2006, Cambridge (Massachusetts, US): MIT Press, pp. 360–370.
  • "Ecology and Ideology: The Case of Ethology", International Problems, vol. XXXIII.63 (3-4): 45–61.
  • "The Becoming of Subjectivity in Animal Worlds", Subjectivity, 2008, 23 (1): 123–129.[4]
  • What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?, translated by Brett Buchanan, 2016, Minneapolis (Minnesota, US): University of Minnesota Press.

Co-authored books in French[edit]

  • With Isabelle Stengers: Les faiseuses d'histoires. Que font les femmes à la pensée?, Paris, La Découverte (Les empêcheurs de penser en rond), 2011.
  • With Jocelyne Porcher: Etre Bête, Arles, Actes sud, 2007.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ A short profile on La Découverte, the website of her publisher in Paris, says:

    Vinciane Despret is a philosopher and researcher at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liège. She is the author of several reference books on animal issues, including Bêtes et hommes (Gallimard, 2007) and Penser comme un rat (Quae, 2009). She has also published, with Isabelle Stengers, Les Faiseuses d'histoires. Que font les femmes à la pensée? (La Découverte, 2011) and Que diraient les animaux... si on leur posait les bonnes questions? (Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond; La Découverte, 2012, 2014).

    — Translated from the French (machine translation).
  2. ^ For instance, this podcast: Despret interviewing the primatologist Thelma Rowell

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Biographie Vinciane Despret" (PDF) (in French). Elèuthera. 15 April 2004. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  2. ^ Despret, Vinciane (June 2004). "The Body We Care for: Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis" (PDF). Body & Society. 10 (2–3): 111–134. doi:10.1177/1357034X04042938. S2CID 144114764.
  3. ^ Despret, V. (2004). Our Emotional Makeup: Ethnopsychology and Selfhood. Other Press. ISBN 9781590510360. Retrieved 15 May 2015.
  4. ^ Despret, Vinciane (July 2008). "The Becomings of Subjectivity in Animal Worlds" (PDF). Subjectivity. 23 (1): 123–139. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.15. Retrieved 9 August 2012. Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
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