Insect affects: the big and small of the entomological imagination in childhood
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 14:50authored byLoo, S, Sellbach, U
Drawing on a scene in J.M.G. Le Clézio's novel Terra Amata, which tells the story of the instincts of a small boy, the minute sensoria of some bugs and a cosmic catastrophe, this essay demonstrates the ambivalence around insects in animal studies, their contingent location in psychoanalysis and the conundrums they place in ethical philosophy. By reading Le Clézio's tale through Uexküll, Freud, Dodds and Stengers we argue for more nuanced, imbricated and critical connections between ethology, psychoanalysis and ethics. These connections become imperatives in the face of the current environmental crisis, where we urgently need to attend to co-affecting relations that are too distant or proximate, tiny or vast to register as familiar sentient states or ethical feelings. In the process we demonstrate the performative dimensions of what we call the entomological imagination – present in the strange proximity of child and bugs, the powerful unthinking god, the indifference of the insects to human commands, and the infinitesimal catastrophe in Le Clézio's story – that facilitates an epistemic fluidity required for a contemporary understanding of ecologies.
History
Publication title
Angelaki
Volume
20
Pagination
79-88
ISSN
0969-725X
Department/School
School of Architecture and Design
Publisher
Routledge Taylor & Francis Ltd
Place of publication
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, England, Oxfordshire, Ox14 4Rn