Translated with www.DeepL.com, hope it will be correct…

1984: Hubert Reeves (who, sadly, passed away recently) published Patience dans l’Azur (Atoms of Silence: An Exploration of Cosmic Evolution), a bestseller that sold a million copies, combining scientific rigor with the most captivating illustrations. My brother and I had passionate discussions with Françoise about this book. We would have had just as many about Vinciane Despret’s L’Autobiographie d’un poulpe.

Author of some twenty books since 1996, she is a psychologist and philosopher—more specifically, a philosopher of science driven by a passion for ethology—whose rigor matches her boldness in her research. Her beautiful writing style gives her a rare ability to de(anthropo)center herself, with a distinct sense of wonder evident when she describes “the kinetic choral writing of Adélie penguins, the initiatory poetry of fireflies, and the labyrinthine epic of the brown rat.”

The Autobiography of an Octopus, a visionary work, recounts the early days of interspecies relations in a world where non-human beings would no longer be treated as generic entities, their individuality finally recognized. Thanks to the remarkable advances (or rediscoveries?) of the past two decades, we know that other animals—since Homo sapiens is one of them too—are no more than we are merely conditioned by reflexes to gain a functional advantage. Chimpanzees, butterflies, octopuses, finches, spiders… all have a personal life beyond mere mechanical responses.

What is unique to humanity is undoubtedly this ability to believe that there is something that is uniquely theirs, something that belongs only to them. Differences between all forms of being-in-the-world are a matter of degree, not essence. This has been laid down in our culture since Darwin at the very least, but it is in fact a knowledge in deed, forgotten, since the dawn of our species. Genesis tells us that we are made in God’s image, designed to dominate creation. The intellectual revolution of the Modern Era put the lid on this by denying that what is not human has the capacity to be anything other than a simple clockwork. The philosophy of the 18th century nailed the coffin shut, defining man as a moral being (Kant), on the understanding that he is the only one. At the same time, it rationalized progress and the takeover of “nature” as something external to us, destined to be exploited (or protected today, which is part of the same paradigm). This “nature”, conceived as an over-determinant that justifies domination, is today nothing but ignorance, narrow-mindedness, lazy thinking and conformism.

This is essentially what *The Autobiography of an Octopus* is about; it reminds us that in 2016, eighty primatologists published a joint statement to establish a new scientific field—primate archaeology—since certain chimpanzee groups build cairns, where they gather to engage in what may well be ritualistic behavior.Moreover, we have moved beyond viewing spider webs solely as fly traps to recognize that they also serve as a vibrating receptacle and a platform for complex dances that are not motivated by the need to capture the trapped insect. The examples could be multiplied ad infinitum.

The Autobiography of an Octopus is, above all, a treatise on literature—a sign that living beings offer to the world in their joy of existence. It is “therolinguistics:… the study of literary forms in animals and plants.” Because no, we are not the only ones who writes.The day will come when “the passive poetry of the eggplant“ and “the tropical novel of the sunflower” will finally be accessible to us, once we have moved beyond our overly narrow categorizations to access “the translation of the invisible and the inaudible.”

Vinciane Despret’s book is also a sequel to Françoise’s *La Trilogie du Losange*

Her writing style (scientific committee reports, official statements hailing “the Minister of Multispecific Culture,” etc.) draws on the Ouranautes journal of the Almond Satellite, reports submitted to the Emerald College, and press clippings from the World Library of the Shepherdesses of the Apocalypse. The sciences proposed by Vinciane Despret—geolinguistics, theolinguistics, theoarchitecture, and so on—would all have their place in the world Françoise created.

These sciences will only be able to fully flourish—and with them the imagined intercessory communities—when, as Françoise put it, “men and women, finally freed from their errors, cease to view one another as opposites.” They will then be able to step back from their reality as a species into a world where it would not be absurd to ask in assembly, as the Wendat did, “Who will speak for the wolf?” Until we can (re?) understand the full significance of the paths they have laid out—paths that Baptiste Morizot views, quite rightly, as a form of writing.

*The Autobiography of an Octopus* is a profoundly ecofeminist book, and even more so a vision of a future in which ecofeminism would be part of humanity’s shared heritage—a milestone that would have finally set us back on the path we would never have strayed from had the social plague that has raged for over 5,000 years, which we call Patriarchy/ Power, had been vanquished.

From the vibratory metrics of pulsars to the “detective story of a poppy in the grip of pesticides“, it’s all about literature, dance and song: stardust.