"There is nothing so expressive as the eyes of animals … which seem objectively to mourn that they are not human." (Theodor W. Adorno)

In her afterword, Camilla Flodin comments: “Is it really the animals who mourn that they are not human? Or is it in fact we who are mourning, or should be mourning, that we are not yet human, that we are not human enough? Is this perhaps what Adorno is implying with his wording: that animals mourn that they are not human because we humans always impress the difference between us and them upon them, and turn this difference into something that is to the animals’ disadvantage.”