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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4728-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Despret, Vinciane, author. | Morrison, Helen (Langauge translator), translator.
Title: Living as a bird / Vinciane Despret ; translated by Helen Morrison.
Other titles: Habiter en oiseau. English
Description: Cambridge ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, [2021] | “Originally published in French as Habiter en oiseau © Actes Sud, France, 2019.” | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021016407 (print) | LCCN 2021016408 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509547265 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509547272 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509547289 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Birds--Territoriality. | Birds--Behavior. | Birds--Research. | Territoriality (Zoology)--Philosophy.
Classification: LCC QL678 .D4713 2021 (print) | LCC QL678 (ebook) | DDC 598--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016407 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016408
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Dedication
For Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers
Acknowledgements
My thanks to:
Alexandra Elbakyan, whose tireless work in sharing and making available countless scientific articles made this research possible.
Stéphane Durand, who gave me the idea for this book, encouraged, supported, commented on and read my work with extraordinary generosity.
Baptiste Morizot, who gave the book its title, its momentum and many more invaluable things besides.
Marcos Matteos Dias for the melodic breathing.
Thibault De Meyer for everything he shares with me, for his notes which so pertinently understand and help others understand what matters, for his emails and his generous rereading.
Maud Hagelstein, not only for reading the manuscript with such extraordinary attention but especially for her enthusiasm and support, so precious in that perilous moment when you find yourself wondering if you should even have written it.
Isabelle Stengers, from the very beginning to the very last lines.
All the people who agreed to discuss my research and who often made me see things in an unexpected light: Serge Gutwirth and his team of researchers on ‘commonings’; my colleagues from the research centre ‘Matérialités de la politique’ at Liège University – in particular Florence Caeymaex, Édouard Delruelle, Jérôme Flas, Antoine Janvier and Ferhat Taylan; Sophie Houdart, Marc Boissenade, Élisabeth Claverie, Patricia Falguières, Élisabeth Lebovici from the Call it Anything collective; Tomas Saraceno, Ally Bisshop and Filipa Ramos.
Pauline Bastin and her decoys, Laurent Jacob, who reminded me about the disappearance of birds, for their welcome and their company.
Laurence Bouquiaux and Julien Pieron, for their interest and their friendship.
Roger Delcommune, Christophe and Céline Caron, Samuel Lemaire and Cindy Colette, and Lola Deloeuvre who, in one way or another, made my life, and Alba’s, so very much more comfortable while I was working.
My family, Jean Marie Lemaire, Jules-Vincent, Sarah and Elioth Buono-Lemaire, Samuel and Cindy once again, who supported me and reminded me that life is about more than just writing.
And Alba, for her infinite patience.
Counterpoint
There are more things between heaven and earth (the realm of birds) than our philosophy can easily explain.
Étienne Souriau1
It all began with a blackbird. My bedroom window had remained open for the first time for many months, a symbol of victory over the winter. The blackbird’s song woke me at dawn. He was singing with all his heart, with all his strength, with all his blackbird talent. From a little further away, probably from a nearby chimney, another bird replied. I could not get back to sleep. This blackbird was singing, as the philosopher Étienne Souriau would say, with all the enthusiasm of his body, as animals do when they are utterly absorbed in their play and in the simulation of whatever it is they are acting out.2 Yet it was not this enthusiasm that kept me awake, nor what an ill-humoured biologist might have called a noisy demonstration of evolutionary success. It was the sustained determination of this blackbird to vary each series of notes. From the second or third call, I was spellbound by what was transforming into an audiophonic novel, each episode of which I greeted with an unspoken ‘and what next?’ Each sequence differed from the preceding one; each was reinvented as a new and original counterpoint.
From that day on, my window remained open every night. With each successive sleepless episode like the one I experienced that first morning, I rediscovered the same surprise, the same sense of anticipation which prevented me from going back to sleep (or even wishing to do so). The bird sang. But never before had song seemed so close to speech. These were phrases. Recognizable as such. They caught my ear in exactly the same way as words themselves would do. And yet, in that sustained effort imposed by the urge to avoid repetition, never had song seemed further removed from language. This was speech, but taut with beauty and where every single word mattered. The silence held its breath and I felt it tremble in tune with the song. I had the most clear and intense feeling that, at that moment, the fate of the entire world, or perhaps the existence of beauty itself, rested on the shoulders of this blackbird.
Étienne Souriau referred to the enthusiasm of the body. The composer Bernard Fort told me that certain ornithologists use
