The aim of this article is to identify a dimension related to animality in bodily experience. The thesis is that animality is a dimension of the body on the borderline between identity and foreignness. The main question is: can a description of the relationship between body and animality shed light on the way we experience corporeality? To answer this question, I will use Bernhard Waldenfels’concept of the experience of the alien and Helmuth Plessner’s biophilosophy. Waldenfels speaks of moments of strangeness in the corporeal self. These are moments in which the subject experiences its own body as identical with itself and at the same time as other than itself. Plessner suggests the idea of an animal form remaining embedded in the human body through his description of the various levels of the organic. The experience of the alien will therefore be related to the animal dimension in the living body to suggest that animality can be considered among the experiences of the alien.
