“What really exists is not things made but things in the making.”
– William James
“Recognizing isn’t at all like seeing; the two often don’t even agree.”
– Sten Nadolny, The Discovery of Slowness
“We’re all trees — trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria — pluralities. Life is embodied network.” – David George Haskell, The Songs of Trees
“[W]e need words that heal that relationship, that invite us into an inclusive worldview of personhood for all beings.”
– Robin Kimmerer
Course Description:
How are the frames of reference and relationships between and of living being: plants, animal, (including human animals) activated, and how do these activations create new conditions for increased sensitivities among others(ness)? That is, how do bodies and worlds articulate each other, how does a human body allow an animal’s world to affect her, and in turn, how does a human’s world affect an animal’s body? Or, how do we learn to be affected? We will look at both critical and creative readings (in all genres) and explore how various systems of language, knowledge and sensing create relations between different bodies, especially in terms of the topics: the compromised body, inherited trauma and physical memory, animal/plant perspectives, influence and reciprocity, personhood, co-dependency, interspecies communication, uncertainty, and polyphony. Class components will include weekly reading responses and discussion, short writing prompts, and a final creative project.
Books
- What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? by Vinciane Despret (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
- Tree Talks by Wendy Burk (Delete Press, 2016)
- The Book of Feral Flora by Amanda Ackerman (Les Figues Press, 2015)
- Humanimal by Bhanu Kapil (Kelsey Street Press, 2009)
- Remembering Animals by Brenda Iijima (Nightboat Books, 2016)
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (Norton, 2018)
- Through Vegetal Being by Luce Irigaray & Michael Marder (Columbia University Press, 2016)
Other Readings
- Robin Kimmerer, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy,” from Braiding Sweetgrass
- Robin Kimmerer, “Speaking of Nature,” Orion
- Vinciane Despret, “The Body We Care For: Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis,” Body & Society
- Eduardo Kohn, “Introduction,” from How Forests Think
- Kimberly Alidio, “Dyke Line Break,” Entropy
- Maya Weeks, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Late Capitalism’s Safe Deposit Box,” Blind Field
- Luce Irigaray, “Starting from Ourselves as Living Beings,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology
- Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness
- Janet Sarbanes, “Lie, Laika, Lie,” Entropy
- J. Drew Lanham, “Forever Gone,” Orion
- Albert White Hat Sr.,“Our Origin Story,” from Life’s Journey—Zuya
- Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I am (More to Follow),” Critical Inquiry
Films
- The Secret Life of Plants (Dir. Walon Green, Soundtrack by Stevie Wonder, 1979)
- Okja (Dir. Bong Joon-ho, Netflix, 2017)
Optional Further Reading
- Flush: A Biography by Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press, 1933)
- Afterglow by Eileen Myles (Grove Atlantic, 2017)
- Janice Lee, “What Humanity Can Learn From Plants,” Medium: Off Beat
- Rebecca Boyle, “Make Like A Tree and Get Outta Here,” The Last Word on Nothing
- Suzanne Simard, “How trees talk to each other,” TED
- Verlyn Klinkenborg, Timothy, or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (Vintage Books, 2007)
- Being a Beast by Charles Foster (Picador, 2017)
- Should Trees Have Standing? by Christopher D. Stone (Oxford University Press, 2010)
- The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram (Vintage, 1997)
- After-Cave by Michelle Detorie (Ahsahta Press, 2014)
