Becoming animal

'Becoming animal' does not mean imitating an animal. Again, it is not about given animal forms but about animal capacities and powers. To become animal is to be drawn into a zone of action or passion that one can have in common with an animal. It is a matter of unlearning physical and emotional habits and learning to take on new ones such that one enlarges the scope of one's relationships and responses to the world.

Christoph Cox, 'Of Humans, Animals and Monsters' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Ltd, 2016) p. 122

Livets ande bor ännu i de döda tingen

Om döda ting älska, om jord och vatten skilja vänner från fiender, ville jag gärna äga deras kärlek. jag ville, att den gröna jorden inte kände mina steg som en tung börda. Jag ville, att hon gärna förläte, att hon för min skull såras med plog och harv, och att hon villigt öppnade sig för min döda kropp. Och jag ville, att vågen, vars blanka spegel sönderslås av mina åror, hade samma tålamod med mig, som en mor har med ett ivrigt barn, när det klättrar upp i hennes knä utan att akta högtidsdräktens oskrynklade siden. Med den klara luften, som dallrar över de blåa bergen, ville jag vara vän och med den blänkande solen och de vackra stjärnorna. Ty det synes mig ofta, som om de döda tingen skulle känna och lida med de levande. Inte är skrankan mellan dem och oss så stor, som människor tro. Vilken del av jordens stoft är det, som inte har varit inne i livets kretsgång? Har inte vägens kringdrivande stoft smekts som mjukt hår, älskats som goda, välgörande händer? Har inte vattnet i hjulspåret fordom strömmat som blod genom klappande hjärtan?

Livets ande bor ännu i de döda tingen. Vad förnimmer han, där han slumrar i drömlös sömn?

Selma Lagerlöf, Gösta Berlings saga (Modernista, 2017) p.328

Skönhet och ingenting annat fordrar vi av livet

Ve mig, ve oss alla, Värmlands barn! Skönhet, skönhet och ingenting annat fordrar vi av livet. Vi, barn av försakelsen, av allvaret, av fattigdomen, höjer våra händer i en enda lång bön och begär detta enda goda, skönhet. Må livet vara som en rosenbuske, blomstra av kärlek, vin och nöjen, och må dess rosor stå varje man till buds! Se, detta önskar vi, och vårt land bär stränghetens, allvarets, försakelsens drag. Vårt land är grubblets eviga symbol, men vi har inga tankar.

Selma Lagerlöf, Gösta Berlings saga (Modernista, 2017) p.285

Själviakttagelsens underliga ande

Men vi tänkte, vi, på själviakttagelsens underliga ande, som redan hade hållit sitt intåg i vårt inre. Vi tänkte på honom med isögonen och de långa, krokiga fingrarna, han, som sitter där inne i själens mörkaste vrå och plockar sönder vår varelse, såsom gamla kvinnor plocka sönder lappar av siden och ylle.

Selma Lagerlöf, Gösta Berlings saga (Modernista, 2017) p. 118

There is no hospitable house

There is almost an axiom of self-limitation or self-contradiction in the law of hospitality. As a reaffirmation of mastery and being oneself in one's own home, from the outset hospitality limits itself at its very beginning, it remains forever on the threshold of itself, it governs the threshold – and hence it forbids in some way even what it seems to allow to cross the threshold to pass across it. It becomes the threshold. This is why we do not know what it is, and why we cannot know. Once we know it, we no longer know it, what it properly is, what the threshold of its identity is.

To take up the figure of the door, for there to be hospitality, there must be a door. But if there is a door, there is no longer hospitality. There is no hospitable house. There is no house without doors and windows. But as soon as there are a door and windows, it means that someone has the key to them and consequently controls the conditions of hospitality. There must be a threshold. But if there is a threshold there is no longer hospitality. This is the difference,  the gap, between the hospitality of invitation and the hospitality of visitation. In visitation there is no door. Anyeon can come at any time and can come in without needing a key for the door. There are no customs checks with a visitation. But there are customs and police checks with an invitation. Hospitality thus becomes the threshold or the door.

Jacques Derrida, 'Hostipitality' in Angelaki, journal of the theoretical humanities, volume 5, number 3 (Routledge, 2000) p. 14

Sustainability and diversity are ecologically linked

Sustainability and diversity are ecologically linked because diversity offers the multiplicity of interactions which can heal ecological disturbance to any part of the system.

Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind (Zed Books Ltd., 1993) p.147

Maximising of one-dimensional output is an economic imperative

The low productivity of diverse, multi-dimensional systems and the high productivity of uniform, one-dimensional systems of agriculture, forestry and livestock is therefore not a neutral, scientific measure but is biased towards the commercial interests for whom maximising of one-dimensional output is an economic imperative.

Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind (Zed Books Ltd., 1993) p.140

Biodiversity cannot be conserved unless production itself is based on a policy of preserving diversity.

Biodiversity conservation here is seen only in terms of setting aside reserves in undisturbed ecosystems for the purpose of conservation. This schizophrenic approach to biodiversity, which adopts a policy of destruction in production processes and a policy of preservation in 'set-asides', cannot be effective in the conservation of species diversity. Biodiversity cannot be conserved unless production itself is based on a policy of preserving diversity.

Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind (Zed Books Ltd., 1993) pp. 86-87

The reductionism of scientific forestry

'Scientific forestry' was the false universalization of a local tradition of forestry which emerged from the narrow commercial interests whcih viewed the forest only in terms of commercially valuable wood. It first reduced the value of diversity of life in the forest to the value of a few commercially valuable species, and further reduced the value of these species to the value of their dead product – wood. The reductionism of the scientific forestry paradigm created by commercial industrial interests violates both the integrity of the forests and the integrity of forest cultures who need the forests in its diversity to satisfy their needs for food, fibre and shelter.

Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind (Zed Books Ltd., 1993) p. 18

Urban space does not simply exist; the land first needs to be tamed

Urban space does not simply exist; the land first needs to be tamed. By the time the British arrived in Singapore in 1819, their approach to land and nature had already been determined. All it needed was the complementary will and the easy compliance of the population for the opening up of that territory. As soon as tigers 'appeared' to and for humans, their very existence needed to be wished away. The island was, quite simply, not big enough for two alpha predators.

Kevin Chua, 'The Tiger and the Theodolite: George Coleman's Dream of Extinction' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Ltd, 2016) p. 216

Animals and the development of modern cities

The process of domestication of some animals like dogs, simultaneous with the systematic marginalization or removal from city centres of certain other animals, both wild and livestock, which started in the Renaissance and intensified in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across Europe, is for Alÿs an integral aspect of the emergence of the modern era and the development of modern cities.

Miwon Kwon, 'Dogs and the City' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Ltd, 2016) p. 203

If nature is like art

But if nature is like art, this is always because it combines these two living elements in every way: House and Universe, Heimlich and Unheimlich, territory and deterritorialization, finite melodic compounds and the great infinite plane of composition, the small and large refrain.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 'Percept, Affect, Concept' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited, 2016) p. 114

Perhaps art begins with the animal

Perhaps art begins with the animal, at least with the animal that carves out a territory and constructs a house (both are correlative, or even one and the same, in what is called a habitat). The territory-house system transforms a number of organic functions – sexuality, procreation, aggression, feeding. But this transformation does not explain the appearance of the territory and the house; rather it is the other way around: the territory implies the emergence of pure sensory qualities, of sensibilia that cease to be merely functional and become expressive features, making possible a transformation of functions.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 'Percept, Affect, Concept' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited, 2016) p. 112

Becoming-animal exercises the ethical art of embracing the animal as gifted

In short, becoming-animal exercises the ethical art of embracing the animal as gifted. Through its indifferent hospitality man does not so much become an animal as disintegrate into the visual grounding of all actual beings.

Seung-Hoon Jeung, 'A Global Cinematic Zone of Animal and Technology' in Animals (Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Ltd, 2016) pp. 99-100

Hospitality itself, opens or is in advance open to someone who is neither expected nor invited

But pure or unconditional hospitality does not consist in such an invitation ("l invite you, l welcome you into my home, on the condition that you adapt to the laws and norms of my territory, according to my language, tradition, memory, and so on"). Pure and unconditional hospitality, hospitality itself, opens or is in advance open to someone who is neither expected nor invited, to whomever arrives as an absolutely foreign visitor, as a new arrival, nonidentifiable and unforeseeable, in short, wholly other. l would call this a hospitality of visitation rather than invitation. The visit might actually be very dangerous, and we must not ignore this fact, but would a hospitality without risk, a hospitality backed by certain assurances, a hospitality protected by an immune system against the wholly other, be true hospitality?

Jacques Derrida, in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror (The University of Chicago Press, 2003) p. 162