Looking for ways of multispecies coexistence
After completing my MA in Advanced Sociological Research with a thesis critical of anthropocentrism in the education for sustainable development agenda, I wanted to find a way to produce transformative knowledge - knowledge that can help build a different world, re-structured according to community and non-oppressive ideas. Thus, I began to turn my attention to sanctuaries for non-human animals, most often "former farm animals" and their potential to nurture animal agency and envision liberation. These spaces consciously reject anthropocentrism and speciesism, putting into practice ethics of interspecies care. Over time, my research focused on the pigeon-human relationship, working in conversation with Silvia Moldovan, a bird caregiver for over ten years, artist and founder of the Sepale sanctuary near Timisoara, Romania.
Relationships between pigeons (columba livia) and humans have been ongoing for a very long time, being part of the unfolding of our common animal history. From the rise of an agricultural society, to the neoliberal capitalism we reside in, pigeons have been involved in the spaces in which humans lived. This relationship is complex, arising from the domestication of the Rock Pigeon about five thousand years ago, to their current synanthropic relationship as a result of multiple processes, including abandonment and constant escape. Currently, the urban space is the home of the pigeons, as they have adapted to live in small rock-like enclosures, close to human presence and food sources. However, cities are anthropocentric, capitalist spaces, privileging a certain kind of being over all others. If we dare look with an ecofeminist, posthumanist and antispeciesist eye, we can start to question the power imbalance in this relationship, and we can even wonder further - what if it were not so? What if the urban space not only welcomed pigeons, but actively recognized its multispecies character? Can looking at our relationships with pigeons tell us what went wrong between humans and other animals, and can it help us imagine what we can do to change them?
Keywords: multispecies futures, pigeons, ecofeminism, antispeciesism, animal liberation
Cu Timpul, Vei Vedea Cum Cerul Este Îndeajuns de Mare [Film]
Looking into the eyes of the residents of the Sepale bird sanctuary, we go back in time, telling the story of the pigeons’ convoluted history with humans. Domesticated, abandoned, synanthropic, feral. These birds, descended from dinosaurs, have become fierce survivors of urban environments – complex spaces polluted by traffic and global consumer networks. The planet’s future is divided into several scenarios predicted by climate experts. What do these mean for synanthropes – those who live alongside humans? If the past is scientific (non)fiction written in fossils and rocks, how can we access the future? And should the one who knows it, accesses it, changes it, still be the solitary anthropos? Our history with pigeons shows that we have never been alone. It shows us a possible vision of another anthropos, one who is in solidarity with others.
A film by Silvia Moldovan & Maria Martelli.
2023 In Time, You Will See How The Sky Is Great Enough, 1920x1080, 11:18. Short film in collaboration with Silvia Moldovan; Specula Magazine [ENG]
2023 In Time, You Will See How The Sky Is Great Enough, 1920x1080, 11:18. Film scurt în colaborare cu Silvia Moldovan. [RO]
Photographs from the art exhibition Cozzzmonautica 2022 - Pădurea Antenelor, Indecis Art Space, Timișoara.
Publications
forthcoming. Practicing Careful Care - Towards Animal Liberation for Feral Pigeons and Beyond, in ed. Paula Arcari, Heterotopia, Radical Imagination and Shattering Orders: Manifesting A Future of Liberated Animals. Routledge
2022 Quattro domande sul piccione comune e sull’umanità urbana. Rivendicare responsabilità non antropocentriche, Liberazioni nr. 48 [IT]
Presentations at academic conferences
2024, August. Care work in multispecies worlds. From exploitation to total liberation. Historical Materialism Cluj / Kolozsvár, Polycrisis across Divides.
2023, November. A political theory of animal rights - after Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka, just wondering… Anthrozoology Symposium: Multispecies Communities and Narratives
2023, October. Collective queer-vegan knowledges - public vegan sociology and thinking-by-talking-together. with Gabriela Oprea as part of CVQ. International Association of Vegan Sociologist Conference: Vegan Intersectionality
2022, October. Anthropocentric histories, animal futures: pigeon-human relationships and the quest for multispecies justice. International Association of Vegan Sociologist Conference: Vegan Sociologies of Space and Time
2022, July. Pigeon Places. The force of western practices on pigeon-human relationships in „epigonal Europe”. Non-Western Approaches in Environmental Humanities, University of Warsaw
2022, June. Crafting visions of a city for pigeons speculations on a non-anthropocentric urban space. CoFUTURES: Futures from the Margins, The Science Fiction Research Association Conference
2021, October . Vegan sociology for urban coexistence: a case study of pigeons and the European city. International Association of Vegan Sociologist Conference: „The Promise of Vegan Sociology: Vegan Sociology as a Conduit for Human and Nonhuman Emancipation”
2021, June. Family as sanctuary, sanctuary as community: two models of multispecies relations for nonhuman animal liberation. European Association for Critical Animal Studies Conference 'Appraising Critical Animal Studies'
2021, June. „One of them came to us”: how sanctuaries as spaces of care enable human and nonhuman animals to advocate together, The Animal Advocacy Conference, University of Kent
2021, June. A clash of knowledges: nonhuman animals, human care-givers, veterinarians and local villagers. 15th SIEF Congress: Breaking the rules? Power, participation and transgression
2020, November. “The sanctuary is our way of living”, animal sanctuaries as life-long relationships and embodied knowledge. Gender Studies Conference 2020, Tampere University
2020, September. Anthropocentric development. Romania’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development at the margins of Europe „Thirty years of capitalist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe”, Cluj-Napoca
2020, August. More-than-human revolutionary voices – re-imagining multispecies communities and agency, Telciu Summer Conference, 9th Edition – Decolonizing Revolutions: Social Movements, Spiritualities and Commoning
Photographs taken at the Sepale sanctuary, Romania, 2022.
"We should remember that pigeons were domesticated long ago, but also that they escaped domestication for hundreds of years, that they were caught up in the threads of human history, forming a common history with us - transformed into meat, messengers, war heroes or symbols of peace. Now pigeons live in most cities around the world, but the qualities that once made them precious and valuable to humans make them undesirable to the 'civilised' city. Their feces are no longer used to feed the soil, but are seen as destructive litter; their ability to reproduce quickly and year-round is disturbing because they are no longer consumed; their ability to adapt to and be housed in human cities is no longer valued, but criticised."
From a work-in-progress manuscript.
"Looking backward at our past relationships of exploitation, currently at our relationship of marginalization and invisibilization, and forward to a possible relationship of coexistence, the dovecote can work as a transitional symbol from violence to multispecies world-making. This is why it is so important to look historically at how it has been used, and understand that more-than-human architecture is not at all innocent or new."
From "Practicing Careful Care - Towards Animal Liberation for Feral Pigeons and Beyond" (forthcoming)