FLY DOWN

 

When getting down to the materiality of things, the unpredicted of crow, the way their tiny biochemical social systems that are in constant flux perform unexpectedly, we find our perception shifted to a different scale – not a scaling out or a scaling up, but a scaling in, as by viewing everything as an assemblage driven by a force, we discover a method of new materialism. (Bennet 2010)

 

If inspected closely, we can find that we are “many all the way down, because we are wholes that are always less than the sum of their parts. We don’t just combine into multitudes, we contain multitudes, as any self-respecting stomach bacterium will tell you.” (Morton 2019 p.119)

 

Similarly - a truth that holds strong even when looked at closely - viewing life on a strange scale of crawling and vying matter better captures “an alien quality of our own flesh” (Bennett 2010 p.113). One which, of course, brings us closer to Crow; because if it’s foreignness that moves the animal into the realm of “radically Other” (Broglio 2011 p.7) then what does this define human as?

-If humans are a featherless bipedal animal, then how does Crow fly within this view-

We are an amalgam made up of alien pieces, vying, vibrant, vigorous matter, which are all deeply untranslatable to us, because our bodies are material – which is never “fully or exclusively human” due to the millions of microorganisms we home. (Bennett 2010 p.113).

 

 

However, hark. Are we not now closing in too much, coming too close to Crow? This is not the scoping out or scaling up Crow is used to, if we are all constituted of so many parts, are we not veering close to an incorrect translation, a falsity, a faker, a scare-crow stuffed with caw-tton?

Are we not reducing things so far down that their matter no longer matters?

 

No, Crow. For if material is all we are, then scale is the thing with feathers. As objects made up of objects, we are able to perceive our separate scales more acutely, perception is the permanent lump in our throat, and we are humbled when viewed from a planetary scope; as we have flown down in close, we must now rise up again..

 

 

“Materiality is a rubric that tends to horizontalize (…) It draws human attention sideways, away from an ontological ranked Great Chain of Being and toward a greater appreciation of the complex entanglements of humans and nonhumans.” (Bennett 2010 p.112) But we must not only be drawn down with the allure of a simple single axis, in accepting the turbulence that Crow posits we must view all scales and axis, all angles and depths, all corners and heights.