Animots is a place to think about animals: what counts as an animal; our own animality; and how humans define their relationships with other animals. We’ll often begin these conversations in pieces of popular (and perhaps not-so popular) culture: news articles; photographs; scientific reports; and videos. While we try to be thought-provoking, we’re also interested in writing in an approachable, understandable way.

Who are we? We’re students & scholars working in the interdisciplinary field of animal studies. More specifically we’re all members of the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada.

The blog is named Animots because we’re interested in writing about animals. The term “animots” isn’t something we came up with. It is a word attributed to Jacques Derrida; a pun (technically a homonym) on the French for animals (animaux) and words (mots). Derrida was, in a very French way, an intelligent guy and coined this term to describe language’s relationship to our animal being. If that doesn’t make all that much sense, don’t sweat it. But you can read what Derrida meant about the term in his own (translated) words.