by Joshua Lobb
23 Rowlands 2009, 2; McCance 2013, 135.
24 Woodward 2008, 168.
25 Ortiz-Robles 2016, xi; McHugh 2009b, 491; McHugh 2006; McHugh 2011, 28, 126; Herman 2011, 159.
26 Woodward 2008, 8.
27 Gibbs 2013, 309; Muecke 2008, 113.
28 Haas 2017, 102.
29 Flavell 2004, 296.
30 Woolf 2001, 1–2.
31 Haas 2017, 99, 19, 9.
32 Coetzee 2016.
33 See Mathews 1997; Rose 2013; Lingus 2003; Wedde 2007.
34 Diamond 2008, 53, 56.
35 Garber in Coetzee 2016, 79; Anker 2011, 184. Granted, Anker also concedes that ‘it [is] precisely their ostensible confusion that lends them value, reflecting the same productive antagonisms that have spawned the multiplying scholarship on Coetzee’s text’.
36 Marvin and McHugh 2014.
37 Smith 2005, 204, 205; Smith and Dean 2009, 7.
38 Smith and Dean 2009, 3.
39 Wolfe 2008, 5–6.
40 Coetzee 2010, 142–143.
41 Coetzee 2016, 35, 62.
42 Coe quoted in Aloi and Bennison 2011, 109; McHugh 2011, 2.
43 Haas 2017, 144.
44 Grosz 2011, 170. She admits elsewhere that ‘the beauty of being a philosopher … is that I can make these bold conjectures. If they don’t work, okay, I’ve learned something, but I think it’s really worth exploring all the range of possible explanations of what art and creativity and construction are’. Copeland 2005.
45 Grosz 2011, 170; Grosz 2008, 44: Grosz 2011, 186.
46 Plumwood 2002, 128.
47 von Uexküll 1957. Although not written for the field we now call animal studies, von Uexküll’s text has inspired critics across animal ethology and critical theory, most notably Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking around deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, and Grosz’s extensive use of the Umwelt to argue for connections between Darwin’s notion of sexual selection and art as a form of animality.
48 von Uexküll 1957, 11.
49 von Uexküll 1957, 5.
50 Grosz 2011, 175–176.
51 von Uexküll 1957, 13.
52 Plumwood 2002, 109.
53 Franklin 2007, 121–122.
54 Grosz 2011, 173.
55 Sacks 2015.
56 Miller 1981, 110–113.
57 King 1990, 683.
58 King 1990, 684.
59 Cholakian 1992, 217.
60 Cholakian 1992, 218.
61 Berger 2009, 14.
62 Mathews 2004, xi.
63 Neyrat 2016, 36.
64 Aisher and Damodaran 2016, 36.
65 Grosz 2008, 39.
66 Woodward 2008, 165–166.
67 Armstrong and Simmons 2007, 7–8.
68 Berger 1972, 27–28.
69 Sarvasy 2016; Baker 2014; Dalziell et al. 2015; Benichov et al. 2016.
70 Lethem 2007.
71 Haraway adapts Pratt’s concept in When Species Meet to examine ‘how [cross-species] subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other’. Haraway 2008, 216.
72 Pratt 1991, 34–35.
73 Ramp et al 2016, np.
74 Boyde 2013, 127, 132.
75 Malewitz 2014, 558.
76 Lunney 2012, np.
77 Coetzee 2016, 65.
78 van Dooren and Rose 2012, 19.
79 Potts 2012; Acampora 2016; Davis 2014; Potts and Armstrong 2013; Singer 2016.
80 Adams 2014, 19.
81 See, for instance, the discussion in Tiffin 2017, 251 or the work of the artist Yvette Watt (discussed in Potts 2017). One of Watt’s photographic series depicts factory farms as ‘haunted’ places, a place where animals are present, but can’t be seen. Even the sites of abattoirs are rendered invisible. Watt tells a story of her intention to return to a factory farm to rephotograph it, but ‘I couldn’t find it to begin with. I found a farm near where I thought this one had been located, but it looked wrong … It took two more visits for the confusion to clear and for me to realise that I was looking at it [but hadn’t recognised it]’. Quoted in Potts 2017, 77.
82 Adams 2006, 595.
83 Alcoff 2007, 48.
84 Adams 2010, 67.
85 Haas 2017, 87.
86 Wolfe 1999, 117–118.
87 See, for instance, Armstrong’s claim that ‘novelists … can never actually access, let alone reproduce what other animals mean on their own terms. Humans can only represent animals’. Armstrong 2008, 2. ‘Discursively dangerous’ is a term I borrow from Alcoff 1991–1992, 7.
88 Plumwood argues that ‘human epistemic locatedness is not the same as anthropocentrism’. Plumwood 2002, 132. Alcoff states that ‘it is not always the case that when others unlike me speak for me I have ended up worse off, or that when we speak for others they end up worse off’. Alcoff 1991–1992, 29.
89 Armstrong 2008, 2–3.
90 Tredinnick 2007, 138.
91 Terdiman 1985, 280.
92 Kaplan 2004, 120, 116.
93 Malewitz 2014, 547.
94 Malewitz 2014, 547–548.
95 Kaplan 2004, 50.
96 Kaplan 2004, 80, 31.
97 For more detailed investigation into how we might be approach texts to read ‘animals as animals’, see McHugh 2009a, 25.
98 De Vos, 2017; Probyn-Rapsey 2013; van Dooren, 2014a; Heise 2016, 48.
99 Heise 2016, 44, 38–39.
100 De Vos 2017, 2–3.
101 Listing is of course another discursive structure: indeed, Leonard Lutwack points out that ‘a favourite literary device from antiquity to the Renaissance was the catalog of birds, or the listing and brief description of as many different species as a writer could muster from his own observation’. Lutwack 1994, 231–232.
102 Klinger quoted in van Dooren 2014b, 275.
103 Attig quoted in Heise 2016, 139.
104 van Dooren 2014b, 275; van Dooren 2014a, 143.
105 Attig quoted in van Dooren 2014b, 283.
106 Diamond 2008, 47, 55.
107 van Dooren 2014b, 285.
108 Beck 2014, 406.
109 See Carlile et al 2003; Priddel 2006; Priddel and Carlile 2009; Priddel et al 2014.
110 For a detailed and nuanced exploration of the ‘decision making about which animals are cared for, but also about those that can, or must, be “sacrificed” in the name of conservation’, see van Dooren, 2015.
111 van Dooren 2015, 7, 24.
112 Prince 1982, 183.
113 Rojas 1978, 681.
114 Rojas 1978, 681.
115 Briggs 2002, 29–32.
116 Plumwood 2002, 181.
117 Plumwood 2002, 193.
118 Merleau-Ponty 1966, 22.
119 Plumwood 2002, 104.
120 van Dooren 2014b, 283.
121 Rowlands 2009, 3; Garber in Coetzee 2016, 74.
122 See, for instance, Woodward’s statement: ‘I refer to animals … as “who” not “which” and by their genders rather than the pronoun ‘it’ which designates object or inanimate status’. Woodward 2008, 14.
123 McHugh 2017, 14.
124 For more detailed discussion on ‘humanised’ and ‘animalised’ animals, see Wolfe 2014, 101.
125 Caracciolo 2014, 500–501.
126 Woodward 2008, 1.
127 Even here, I don’t get it quite right. After writing the story I read Plumwood’s advice that ‘you must never look a lyrebird too boldly in the eye as it steps past you at close quarters, or it may interpret your interest as evil intent and take fright; if you want to avoid alarming it, feign boredom and take an occasional sideways or casual glance from under your lashes’. As Plumwood puts it, ‘it helps to know how the other will read one’s actions, what the etiquette of an interspecies encounter is likely to be’. Plumwood 2002, 192.
128 van Dooren and Rose 2012, 17.
129 Rose 2013, 11.
130 Rose 2008, 56.
131 van Dooren and Rose 2012, 17.
132 Pratt 1991, 39.
Acknowledgements
As the Field Notes indicate, the research undertaken for this novel has been multifarious, involving reading from scholarly and non-scholarly sources, as well as discussions with colleagues and friends. Both the tacit and the explicit material needs to be acknowledged more formally. I take the opportunity here to cite my research and to thank those people who shaped and challenged the writing.
The epigraphs for the novel are from William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ (1961 [1820]) and Theodore Roethke’s ‘Meditations of an Old Woman: First Meditation’ (1961[1958]). The latter is reprinted by permission from Faber and Faber Ltd and Penguin Random House, copyright © 1955 by Theodore Roethke; used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
My capacity to engage with the ideas in this book is only possible because of my involvement in the Centre for Critical Creative Practice (C3P) at the University of Wollongong, and in particular its Material Ecologies (MECO) research strand. Many, many thanks to Sue Turnbull and Su Ballard, co-directors of the centre, and especially to the MECO practitioners and thinkers who have taught me so much about birds (as well as about trees, wombats, weather patterns, ghosts, plastic bags, drones and Alexa devices). The project really began as we walked and worked together at Bundanon. Thank you Su Ballard, Louise Boscacci, Brogan Bunt, Nicky Evans, Agnieszka Golda, Mike Griffiths, Eva Hampel, Lucas Ihlein, Madeleine Kelly, Jo Law, Cath McKinnon, Ted Mitew, Chris Moore, Jo Stirling and Kim Williams.
The project came alive when Melissa Boyde gave me her support and shared her insights with me. Melissa, thank you for your limitless enthusiasm and generous championing of the work. Without your interest I would not have pushed myself to think about all the implications of writing about human and nonhuman animals. As will be seen from my references below, the project has been informed, extended and cajoled by many essays in Animal Studies Journal, so I thank you for including my work in this space.
From Sydney University Press, thanks to Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Melissa Boyde for rich and insightful editorial advice, and for pushing me to think beyond myself. Thanks to Agata Mrva-Montoya, Denise O’Dea and Alexandra Guzmán for patience and generosity. Thanks to Louise Thurtell for extraordinary copy editing.
The work flourished during my LitLink Residential Fellowship at Varuna in 2016. Thank you to Jansis O’Hanlon, Vera Costello and Sheila Atkinson for kindness and food! Thank you to Denise Young, Michelle Haines Thomas, Diana Jarman and Hayley Lawrence for sharing wonderful nights reading and eating. Special thanks to Peter Bishop for talking about music and for calling this book a novel.
Thanks to Noel Broadhead from the University of Wollongong Library for his copyright advice and enthusiasm for the project (especially the kookaburra story).
Thanks to Anne Collett, who gave me the ‘Birds’ issue of Kunapipi at exactly the time I needed it. The collection of essays and poems in this issue informed and enriched all of the stories here, directly and indirectly.
Thank you to my Creative Writing and English Literatures colleagues at the University of Wollongong (staff and students) who work so hard and are always generous with their time and collegiality. Thanks to the following for listening to and reading drafts and knowing what I’m going through: A.J. Corradini, Shady Cosgrove, Daniel Fudge, Chloe Higgins, Chrissy Howe, Luke Johnson, Susie Lenehan, Cath McKinnon, Scott Tahvanainen, Alan Wearne and Ika Willis.
Thanks to Andrew Craig and the other swimmers at the Continental Pool for many, many conversations about birds. (Sorry I couldn’t include the pelican story.)
Thanks to Tara Palajda, Jo Durtnell-Smydzuk, Alli Knaggs, Jacinta Landon and Jenny Gales for keeping me sane during the writing process. The work is dedicated to Jenny.
Special thanks to my trusted readers Kate O’Donnell, Cathy Hunt and Dayne Kelly: I depend on you. Thank you, Kate, for the multiple conversations about every aspect of the work, and especially for workshopping of the last line with me.
Extraordinary thanks to Amy Kersey for her extraordinary birds in this book. They are truly the greatest things in the world. Thank you, Amy.
Thanks to Damien, Hershey and Honey for their patience when I’m away and their love when I come home.
What He Heard
The epigraph for the story is from David Mitchell’s novel Black Swan Green. Copyright © 2007 by David Mitchell. Reprinted by permission from Hodder and Stoughton Limited (worldwide) and from Penguin Random House (USA).
A version of the story appeared in Animal Studies Journal in 2015. Thanks to Melissa Boyde. It was written on a retreat organised by the MECO network at UOW. Thanks especially to Su Ballard and Kim Williams.
I’m grateful to Shady Cosgrove, Scott Bazley and Seattle Brooks Bazley for their hospitality sharing their cabin at Wombeyan. I’m especially grateful to Sterling for telling the ghost story, and to Dai Fan for listening to it with me.
Six Stories about Birds, with Seven Questions
The epigraph for the story is from Freya Mathews’ ‘Living with Animals’ (1997).
The statistics I cite at the end of the story are from Adrian Franklin’s 2007 essay ‘Relating to Birds in Postcolonial Australia’. I also cite Professor Mike Archer from the Australian Museum; this quotation is taken from Franklin’s essay.
Other texts inform the stories within the story:
Cinderella
The main version I used was from Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm’s The Complete Fairy Tales (2007).
I allude to the Grimm stories ‘The Three Languages’, ‘The Seven Ravens’, ‘The Golden Bird’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’.
I also refer to Shaena Lambert’s ‘Kublai Khan and the Sun Bird: A Fairy Tale’ (2001) and Fernán Caballero’s ‘The Bird of Truth’ (2002).
New Caledonian Crows
The two YouTube clips featuring David Attenborough are real and can be found at https://bit.ly/THXr6z and https://bit.ly/2Otk7c2. Thanks to Su for sending them to me.
I cite directly Alex Weir, Jackie Chappell and Alex Kacelnik’s 2002 article ‘Shaping of Hooks in New Caledonian Crows’.
Birds of Paradise
I cite directly Alfred Russel Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan, and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel, with Sketches of Man and Nature (1869) and Oliver Goldsmith’s A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature (1825).
The newspaper article the narrator refers to is a fiction.
Thanks to Yaron Lifschitz for giving me an internship at the Australian Museum all those years ago, and telling me the story of the legless birds.
St Kevin and the Blackbird
I cite two lines from Seamus Heaney’s poem, ‘St Kevin and the Blackbird’ (1992). Reprinted by permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.
The Siege of Acre
I cite directly T.A. Archer’s The Crusade of Richard I, 1189–92 (1889) and Helen Macdonald’s Falcon (2016 [2006]).
I also draw upon the discussion of the Crusades in Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk (2014). The documentary the narrator watches is fictitious.
Thanks to Louise D’Arcens for introducing me to H is for Hawk and to the story of Philip and Saladin.
The Swan and the Goose
Thanks to Pamela Mildenhall and the Con Voci Chamber Choir for introducing me to the story. I’ve drawn heavily on the bittersweet melody in Bob Chilcott’s musical version of story, first performed in 2008.
Call and Response
The epigraph for the story is from Don Stap’s Birdsong: A Natural History (2005).
‘Call and Response’ is based on walks into the Leura Valley taken during my stay at Varuna, the Writer’s House. I’ve moved the sign from its location near the Ferber Steps and added a few words. Apologies to the lyrebirds who were taken out of the story.
Flocking
The epigraph for the story is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act V, Scene ii.
In the story, I quote from Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, John Keats’ ‘Bright Star’ and T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. The last poem is reprinted by permission from Faber and Faber Ltd.
Thanks to State of Play for letting me watch them flock. This story is for Denise Young—not for the Drama, but for her kindness to me when I was a young man.
Do You Speak My Language?
The epigraph for the story is from David Wills’ ‘Meditations for the Birds’ (2011).
Special thanks to John Littrich, School of Law, University of Wollongong for explaining legal processes to me and providing me with many resources for the story.
I have referenced several legal, critical and creative works directly in the story. I cite them here in order of appearance:
The episode of Spicks and Specks was broadcast on 26 September 2007. Part of the episode can be seen at https://bit.ly/2J670r6.
A summary of the judgement from the original case, Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited (2010) FCA 29, can be found at https://bit.ly/2pU2i7k.
Michael Leunig is quoted in Nicolas Suzor and Rachel Choi’s ‘The Down Under Book and Film remind us our Copyright Laws are still Unfair for Artists’ (2015).
The Facebook page I refer to does exist and is still accessible. I invented some of the postings.
Colin Hay’s comment that the costs for the case were ‘something like sixty grand’ is cited in Justice James Edelman’s 2016 paper ‘The Nature and Function of Intellectual Property: Lessons from Down Under’, presented at the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand Inc.
The YouTube clip featuring Piedmont High warblers is real and can be found at https://bit.ly/2P05e0r.
The Girl Guides judges’ comments and letter from the Executive Committee of the Girl Guides comes from the summary of the judgement from the case Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited (2009) FCA 799. This can be found at https://bit.ly/2CQRKOy.
