The mask of the beast. The Human/Animal border in the meshes of the law

This essay highlights the fault lines that arise when human otherness meets the nonhuman. Throughout European history, the idea of the human being has been expressed in contradistinction to the animal. The animal issue immediately enters the scene as a reinforcing element of an opposition that becomes all the more radical the more the Other escapes the meshes of recognition. The fault lines in which human otherness meets with the non-human have produced a substantial body of knowledge from civil and criminal lawyers: from the social imaginary of the heretic in the Middle Ages to zoomorphism in the physiognomy of the Renaissance; and from the madmen of Bicêtre put on display like exotic beasts to the enfant sauvages of the 18th century. Nowadays, even in the field of international humanitarian law it remains difficult to define the idea of respect for human dignity without having to resort to the human/animal semantic space.