This essay constitutes an attempt to expose, with reference to contemporary animal research, the limits of Martin Heidegger?s concept of the being of Animality in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (1929/30) and to propose some possible ways to think, within the philosophical style of this particular work, the being of those animals that most distinctly transcends Heidegger?s concept. The essay seeks to address the following question: Do the results of contemporary animal research expose ways of being within Animality that withdrawal from Heidegger?s concept of the being of Animality in general, and if so, how should we think these new ways of animal being? The motivation to ask this question, I argue, are immanent to Heidegger?s thinking in at least three ways: 1) Because of his standpoint that philosophy cannot, in any meaningful way, create an ontological concept of Animality without an orientation towards the results of the positive sciences; 2) Because of the unfinished and tentative character of Heidegger?s analysis, a character that is such that it should be seen, according to Heidegger himself, as an essential point of departure for further thinking; 3) Because of Heidegger?s view that the being of the animal are such that it involves the withdrawal of this very being from any originary access, a withdrawal that necessitates an infinite return to the question concerning the being of the animal. The essay wants to be a continuation of lines that are present in Heidegger?s open-ended thought on this theme rather than to be an external critique that approach the text, which is most often the case, as a closed point of view which we are forced to affirm or reject.

This essay constitutes an attempt to expose, with reference to contemporary animal research, the limits of Martin Heidegger?s concept of the being of Animality in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (1929/30) and to propose some possible ways to think, within the philosophical style of this particular work, the being of those animals that most distinctly transcends Heidegger?s concept. The essay seeks to address the following question: Do the results of contemporary animal research expose ways of being within Animality that withdrawal from Heidegger?s concept of the being of Animality in general, and if so, how should we think these new ways of animal being? The motivation to ask this question, I argue, are immanent to Heidegger?s thinking in at least three ways: 1) Because of his standpoint that philosophy cannot, in any meaningful way, create an ontological concept of Animality without an orientation towards the results of the positive sciences; 2) Because of the unfinished and tentative character of Heidegger?s analysis, a character that is such that it should be seen, according to Heidegger himself, as an essential point of departure for further thinking; 3) Because of Heidegger?s view that the being of the animal are such that it involves the withdrawal of this very being from any originary access, a withdrawal that necessitates an infinite return to the question concerning the being of the animal. The essay wants to be a continuation of lines that are present in Heidegger?s open-ended thought on this theme rather than to be an external critique that approach the text, which is most often the case, as a closed point of view which we are forced to affirm or reject.

The inhuman element in Djuna Barnes?s works has been widely acknowledged. So far the research has, however, concerned itself primarily with Animality, thus neglecting the importance of things and thingliness in her texts. In this essay I outline a new way of approaching Barnes were things are taken into account as a vital element in her literary world, using theories on prostheses, fetishes and souvenirs. In Nightwood and four of the short stories, ?A Night Among the Horses?, ?Aller et Retour?, ?Cassation?, and ?The Grande Malade?, I examine clothing, interiors, collections, statues and dolls as objects that in different ways harbour meaning, dream, riddle, memory, history, longing and desire.