The power of a word
Derrida suggests the word "animal" is inherently problematic as it bundles up all that is non-human under one category, equating insects with birds, lions with fish, mice with alpacas. We require new ways of seeing, alternative perspectives that acknowledge interspecific differences. A nuanced view of a nuanced world.
Insects
They buzz, they flutter, they tickle our necks and creep down our backs. They scurry into the cracks in the walls and play hide-and-seek in our shoes. They reveal only a glimpse of their lives, and that glimpse is bizarre. Alien. Somehow terrifying. It makes us shiver and reach for the swatter or the spray, the guillotine or the poison. The giants of the world are threatened by little winged smudges and many-legged dots.
In Scientists' Warning to Humanity on Insect Extinctions, Cardoso et al establish that though our world is home to over five million different insect species, many are facing extinction and the vast majority have not been classified. They are steadily dying and we do not know their names.
I cannot claim that the problem is solely linguistic. Our way of life, our enormous population, our ever-increasing demands of the Earth do not make us good terrestrial flatmates. But language does have a role to play. We cannot distinguish between the harmful and the benign when our only descriptor is 'bug'. We cannot perceive the necessity of the insect world when we shy aware from a 'creepy-crawly'.
We need new ideas, and new words with which to clothe them.
