BEING MELLIFEROUS: TOWARDS MULTISPECIES AESTHETICS

Abstract

Following the bee engages terra, flora, atmosphere, climate, cosmos, and animal species including the human. Human-bee relations, which are transhistorical and transcultural, spanning from prehistory to contemporary times, articulate relations across these planetary registers through a variety of aesthetic forms. This dissertation focuses on the honey bee, her creations of honey, wax, propolis, hives, and the entity of pollen. It then traces entangled transformations occurring across the airy rhizome of pollination to develop the overarching concept of what I call being melliferous. Being melliferous, a biological term for mutual reciprocities across plants and pollinators, is adapted into an aesthetic-philosophic proposal for rethinking hegemonic and anthropocentric paradigms of “nature” by incorporating a post-humanist, multispecies lens. Drawing from a range of thinkers including Jacques Derrida, Jane Bennett, Edouard Glissant, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Gaston Bachelard, Michel Serres, Luce Irigaray and others; a hybrid methodology of affective phenomenology inspired by multispecies studies and deconstruction is practiced to develop concepts of being melliferous that work towards multispecies aesthetics. The six concepts of being melliferous - blur, gather, hum, threshold, permeability, and shimmer - emerge from human artistic-poetic practices that incorporate and interpret bees and bee adjacent substances. In addition to human crafted artifacts, artworks, installations, and fictional narratives; the creations of honey bees are also considered aesthetically and philosophically revising historical human-bee relationships to include the bee ix as artist and maker. These complex notions are explored through close analysis of bee-centric artworks created by artists including Joseph Beuys, Agentha Dyck, Terence Koh, Wolfgang Laib, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, and others; narratives written by authors Laline Paull and Sarah Blake; and ancient artifacts. As a result, the dissertation aims at revealing interspecies collaborative engagement relevant for the future understanding of planetary aesthetics.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1070/thumbnail.jp