Compound eyeS
In my previous post, I suggested that humans must take in the micro and macro scales of their destruction; something which triggers a ‘c’ sickness from its destabilising effect. A macro scale is necessary to comprehend the totality of pesticide-linked deaths since it mostly appears to us as a hyperobject. Similar to global warming, the incomplete effects of pesticide use exists beyond spatiotemporal specificity. That is to say, while we can scrutinise the single death of the tawny frogmouth, it alone cannot reveal the hyperobject in its totality since there is a whole causal chain of other deaths that we are blind to.
Since hyperobjects are imperceptible to humans, we need a new lens. In insectostance, one pulls away from the collective in order to gain a viewpoint of an individual within the collective. While humans might find it difficult to comprehend the totality of subciding life forms and inevitably position oneself as the agent who acts upon the non-human world, the insectostance gives us perspective of the whole destruction whilst recognising our very positions within the hyperobject.
If we are to take on an insectostance to truly see the deaths below our gaze, perhaps the blueberry aphid’s sight provides us with the literal lens for taking in the totality of our destruction. The aphids, which are prone to pesticide spraying from blueberry farmers, possess a pair of compound eyes consisting of tiny independent photoreception units which distinguish brightness and colour. In this sense, the aphid’s view is like a mosaic made up of tiny images that converge to represent one larger visual image. Similarly, the notion of subcide requires us to hold the millions of pesticide-affected life forms in a singular image - from the farmed blueberry bush to the pulsing Hearnes lake. Thus, it is through Compound eyeS that we can truly see the chain of pesticide deaths in its totality.
George Raptis (z5206747)
Links to Further Readings
- "Senses. Insect eyes." In Insects and Spiders of the World (Marshall Cavendish, New York, 2003).
- "Eye", AphID, last modified March 2014, https://aphid.aphidnet.org/eye.php#:~:text=Most%20adult%20aphids%20have%20a,margin%20of%20the%20compound%20eye.