The text has three parts. In the first step, the author assumes the identity of the character created by Kafka, Rotpeter, and writes about the question of animality in the works of the writer from Prague. In the second part, there is a discussion about the origins of the topos of animality in the contemporary culture. For that, the author retrieves topics that emerged at the foundation of the Aesthetics, as well as presents the crossings among aesthetics and science (specially the theorem of the origin of the species, by Darwin). In the conclusion, the text shows how this debate about the animal and the"nature" issues can be though in the context of the biopolitical issue of compassion. At this point, the author bases his discussion on two books by J.M. Coetzee, and shows how compassion and charity can be at the origin of an authoritarian tutelage of the "other".
animality; compassion; abjection