It is possible to oppose man to other living things, and at the same time to organise the complex � and not always edifying � economy of relations between men and animals, only because something like an animal life has been separated within man � if this is true, if the caesura between the human and the animal passes first of all within man, then it is the very question of man - and of �humanism� that must be posed in a new way� We must learn instead to think of man as what results from the incongruity of these two elements, and investigate not the metaphysical mystery of conjunction, but rather the practical and political mystery of separation. What is man, if he is always the place � and, at the same time, the result � of ceaseless divisions and caesurae? (Agamben The Open).

Agamben