CAPITALISM’S HOLOCAUST OF ANIMALS

A NON-MARXIST CRITIQUE OF CAPITAL, PHILOSOPHY

AND PATRIARCHY

BY KATERINA KOLOZOVA

Kolozova offers a Non-Marxist critique, a term coined by François Laruelle in his Introduc-
tion to Non-Marxism (2014) in reference to his anterior concept of “Non-Philosophy” (see
Laruelle, Philosophy and Non-Philosophy, 2013). For a further development on Kolozova’s
part, see her Towards a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism (2015).

“The physical and the automaton, introducing the radical dyad of the non-human.” Reminis-
cent of Descartes’ conception of nonhuman animals as “non-sentient automata.”

“Holocaust” ← ὁλόκαυστος (holókaustos) = wholly (ὅλος, hólos) burnt (καυστός, kaustós) /

burnt offering, burning of the dead animal | ‫‘( עֹלָה‬olah) = whole burnt offering / that which
goes up (in smoke), ascent | ‫( ָעלָה‬alá) = (to) ascend / (to) cost

Cf. “Shoah” ← ‫( שואה‬sho’á) = catastrophe, ruin

this is when “Holocaust” becomes a divisive term in the comparison between human and non-human
suffering (vi).

The decision to equate Jews with cattle and the nonhuman may be construed as antisemitic,
but the fact remains that Jews were assigned such status, and it was on the basis of such status
that the Holocaust was committed. The rectification of any such valuation is decisively a
posteriori, only serving to obfuscate the issue at hand.

differend: A wrong or injustice that arises because the discourse in which the wrong might be ex-
pressed does not exist. To put it another way, it is a wrong or injustice that arises because the prevailing
or hegemonic discourse actively precludes the possibility of this wrong being expressed. To put it still
another way, it is a wrong or injustice which cannot be proved to have been a wrong or injustice be-
cause the means of doing so has (also) been denied the victim – Oxford, A Dictionary of Critical The-
ory, 2010.

This is what a wrong would be: a damage accompanied by the loss of the means to prove the damage.
 This is the case if the victim is deprived of life, or all of his or her liberties, or of the freedom to make
his or her ideas or opinions public, or simply the right to testify to the damage… In all of these cases, to
the privation constituted by the damage there is added the impossibility of bringing it to the knowledge
of others – Lyotard, The Differend, 1988.

“we have to start by coming to terms with what we did to the animals in the constitutive act
of philosophy.” We wronged them.

This should not be taken to mean that linkages cannot eventually be made, that justice cannot be done
in spite of a differend. But new phrases regimens will need to be invented, new gestures or ways of ex -
isting together will have to be found, to get around this incommensurability – SEP, “Jean François
Lyotard,” 3.3

Kolozova is concerned firstly with the original and etymological meaning of “holocaust” for the An-
cient Greeks – as Holocaustos, the “burning of the dead animal” (which ensures the “immortal light of
reason”) (vi).

Though Kolozova herself makes no direct analogy between the Jewish holocaust and the animal one,
the original function of Holocaustos – the “burning of the dead animal” – as the “foundation of logos
and law and order in the polis,” has implications that are even more terrifying. In what Derrida called
our “war on animals,” we are all criminals, most often unconsciously – simply “following” the orders
and laws of the polis (vii).

The presupposition of the Prometheus myth is to be found in the extravagant value which a naïve hu -
manity attached to fire as the true pal l adi um of every ascending culture. But that man should freely
dispose of fire without receiving it as a present from heaven, either as a lightning bolt or as the warm -
ing rays of the sun, struck these reflective primitive men as sacrilege, as a robbery of divine nature.
Thus the very fi rst phil osophi cal probl em immediately produces a painful and irresolvable con-
tradiction between man and god and moves it before the gate of every culture, like a huge boulder. The
best and highest possession mankind can acquire is obtained by sacri l ege and must be paid for with
consequences that involve the whole flood of sufferings and sorrows with which the offended divinities
have to afflict the nobly aspiring race of men – Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §9.

The role of holocaust in the upheaval of Logos, Law, and Order within the polis can only be
understood in its relation with fire, “the true palladium of every ascending culture.” A divine
statue imbued with magical properties, the palladium was supposed to represent Pallas, god-
dess of Reason, and guarantee the integrity of the polis in its possession and veneration. Hu-
manity’s foundational sacrilege, its “taking of the sacred,” marks the “constitutive act of
philosophy,” alongside its “very first philosophical problem.” Similarly, humanity’s attempt
at redemption, sacrifice and holocaust, its “making” and posterior “giving of the sacred,”
marks the very first philosophical solution.