Having emerged in the early 2010’s, in France, animal studies and zoopoetics echo the strong interest in ethical issues observed since the turn of the 21st century, a time when profound changes have reconfigured the study of contemporary literature. However, this article stems from the observation that the commitment that underlies a literature concerned with alterity is not articulated in the same way, depending on whether one recognizes the existence of an inner life in the « anonymous » figures that one seeks to reintegrate into the collective memory, as is the case with biofiction, or whether there is ambiguity as to the degree to which this « other » is endowed with consciousness, as is the case with animal studies. The case of Stéphane Audeguy’s Histoire du lion Personne testifies to the limits of these overlaps, and demonstrates that the very attempt to depict the inner life of animals implicitly illustrates the more programmatic rather than retrospective nature of the zoopoetic engagement, concerned with halting their demise.