Động vật không cần phải trả lại. Nó luôn luôn hiện diện. Động vật, và ở đây số nhiều là cần thiết để được công nhận một sự đa dạng sáng lập, tiếp tục xuất hiện. | Chapter 3 The Insistent Dog Blanchot and the Community without Animals The Dog The animal does not need to return. It is ever present. Animals and here the plural is necessary in order that a founding diversity be acknowledged continue to appear. Here in Goya s painting a dog appears Figure .1 In appearing questions arise. Is the dog s head above the line Is the dog slipping back Its head is on the line. Is it submerging again tasting death as the admixture of the fear and the quicksand that will eventually end the ebb and flow of life Is it scrambling futilely up a bank that no longer holds If the logic of these questions were to be followed then the dog s presence would be defined by its eventual death. There is however another possibility. While still allowing for the severity of the animal s predicament its appearance may be precisely the ebb and flow thus a continuity of life not structured by death but by Within what specific set-up then does the dog appear The question has force precisely because it has an exigency that cannot be escaped since neither answer nor direct resolution is at hand. The question endures. Once allowed to exert its hold then the question repositions the line. No longer mere appearance the line is neither the sign of a simple division nor is it able to sustain a simple either or. Death cannot be equated with the dark. Equally the light cannot be reduced to the life that may be escaping though it should not be forgotten that Goya s work belongs to the so-called Black Paintings . To return to the painting the dog s head interrupts the line. As a result what is opened is a site. Perhaps to use a word that will play an important role in the analysis to come what emerges is an écart that refuses to be set within simple and symmetrical oppositions. Before continuing it is essential to note that this interruption occurs as the result of animal presence a presence that insists within the question of the animal s .
