Inhaltszusammenfassung

For the Birds: Poetry, Bird-Watching and Ethical Attentiveness Drawing on the ecocritical thought of poet Don McKay, this article suggests that although ecopoetry strives to reposition human animals in a co-shared and co-dependent relation with the non-human world, poetic representation always stands the risk of pulling critters into the orbit of human language and thus subjecting them to a type of intellectual possession by humans. Examining the playfulness of ravens and the noisy sociabi...For the Birds: Poetry, Bird-Watching and Ethical Attentiveness Drawing on the ecocritical thought of poet Don McKay, this article suggests that although ecopoetry strives to reposition human animals in a co-shared and co-dependent relation with the non-human world, poetic representation always stands the risk of pulling critters into the orbit of human language and thus subjecting them to a type of intellectual possession by humans. Examining the playfulness of ravens and the noisy sociability of robins leads McKay to suggest that humans are not the only animals who communicate with language, engage in jokes, or have the capacity to mourn. Yet, as made clear in McKay's encounter with one raven whose mutilated, shotgun-damaged body was made into a spectacle as a hunter’s trophy display, the human sense of self as a mastering, possessing and dominating subject poses many real dangers to other animals. This article explores the risky, difficult but potentially ethical relation that could exist between humans and other animals, based on a performative form of attention that is not possessive but rather closer to an homage: ecopoetry written not about the birds, but for the birds——a form of bird-watching that respects birds in their marvellous and radically unassimilable autonomy. » weiterlesen» einklappen

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Klassifikation

DFG Fachgebiet:
Literaturwissenschaft

DDC Sachgruppe:
Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft