Conversations with critters

Well, a critter

The philosopher Eva Meijer has asked me to interview her about her new book, Multispecies Dialogues, which will be published next year, and so I am reading it.

She starts off explaining why she has chosen to write of her (and others') interactions with animals and the more-than-human world as dialogues or conversation. And that's interesting. Partly it's about respect: treating the Other as though they have a point of view. That changes one's attitude. In addition, it is the case that other creatures (and plants) have knowledge about what is good and bad for them that we don't have. Further, when she considers being in dialogue with the North Sea, the idea is that the sea does indeed have agency. She refers to the work of Jane Bennett who argues that agency arises out of encounters, it arises among assemblages of beings and "things". Think of cutting down a tree: I am sawing; the saw is cutting; the tree is resisting and then falling. Something like running involves the ground pushing and receiving. All of this helps us to think better about what we are doing to and with whom.

In one section, about her dog, Olli, she talks about his virtues (openness and steadfastness), which shaped the way he approached encounters and how he conversed. Then she writes about mice. She took many lab mice who had been "given away" when not needed for research. The authenticity and integrity with which she approaches her dialogues with the mice is wonderful. She was attentive to them, seeing what they liked and did not like, and she responded accordingly. She talks about "epistemic violence" - which is the refusal to see others as bearers of knowledge and to silence them, of "background" them. And she talks about their facial expressions.

There is a chapter on rescuing migrating amphibians which was also great as here she talks about embodied knowledge. By being attuned to them, your eyes "learn to see them" (other people walk or drive past without noticing); through carrying them, you learn how to hold them.

Anyway, it's really interesting and I feel honoured by her request.