De Anima - The Soul Between Man and Animal

'De anima' – the title says it all: on the one hand, it tells the biography of a cat, looking back on its short, intense life; on the other hand, it spans the philosophical arc from Aristotle to Derrida, reflecting on the meanings of our coexistence with animals. In Aristotle's work “De anima”, all living beings are said to have a sense of perception – plants orient themselves according to light and shadow, heat and cold, animals use it to explore their surroundings, humans reflect on it. Metaphysics was thoroughly deconstructed by Derrida, and in between lies the legacy of phenomenology. Mühleis moves within these dimensions with his reflections on the subject, contrasting them with concrete experiences, drawing from them as well as writing about them, probing, poetic, multi-layered.

The focus is less on the verbalisation of the animalistic – as in E.T.A. Hoffmann or Franz Kafka – than on the withdrawal of linguistic communication in favour of physical presence and perception. Never letting the cat out of the bag is a fundamental feature of its behaviour; it suddenly sits silently next to you and watches the human goings-on. As elusive as it is approachable, helping to shape the shared world leaves traces in humans that make its absence all the more painful. In mourning its loss, one's own creaturely connection becomes apparent.