Whisker, paw, fur, tail, or the anthropology of the cat

Abstract

In the proposed text, I attempt to metaphorize the cultural topos of the cat and place it in the diverse interpretative contexts offered by contemporary anthropology. A cat is a circulation of meanings circulating between an individual and a social community, and more broadly, a cultural resource of knowledge. Cats are a topos, a figure, a metaphor, and their images and presence simultaneously smoothen and sharpen the dimension of perception of the world. With a spiral, not to say catlike, movement, I try to outline the subject matter presented in the title, jumping from scientific to poetic discourse and vice versa: moving from an impressionistic, descriptive idiom to a conceptual, generalizing mode of inference, a nomothetic mode running through various genres of statements along a narrow semiotic path. Leading from a small, ethnographic detail to abstract, general considerations, perhaps even thought experiments.