Living Walls
Octavia E. Butler and Xenoarchitecture as an Interspecies Mediator
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.18.1.6927Abstract
In her acclaimed science fiction trilogy Xenogenesis, Octavia E. Butler presents a narrative of interspecies coexistence involving humans and the alien Oankali. This coexistence is facilitated by living entities known as Lo, which serve as dynamic architectures mediating positive, mutualistic interactions between the two species. These entities offer a valuable framework for analysing architectures that seek to integrate the other. In this article, we propose to extend existing debates on interspecies co-design practices and link them to the concept of xenoarchitecture. Furthermore, we propose the Interspecies Interaction Protocols (IIP) to regulate human/other-than-human interactions in built environments. To demonstrate that xenoarchitecture’s interspecies mediating vision can be applied to non-fictional real-world architecture, we project ideas from Butler’s onto three unusual examples of buildings that achieve this human/other-than-human mediation: the library at the National Palace of Mafra and Coimbra University’s Joanina Library, both located in Portugal, and the Karni Mata temple, located in Rajasthan, India. These case studies illustrate positive IIPs that facilitate mutualistic coexistence between humans and two other species, bats and rats.
References
Arcary, Paula, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Haley Singer. ‘Where species don’t meet: Invisibilized animals, urban nature and city limits.’ Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4, no. 3 (July 7, 2020): 940-965.
Armen Avanessian, Lietje Bauwens, Alice Haddad, Markus Miessen, Wouter De Raeve. Perhaps It Is High Time for a Xeno-architecture to Match. London: Stenberg Press, 2018.
Bello-Marcano, Manuel, Marianne Celka and Mathias Rollot. ‘Contributions Towards Interspecific Architectural Theory.’ Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère, 14 (2022): 1-10.
Birnie-Gauvin, Kim, Kathryn Peiman, Austin J Gallagher, Robert de Bruijn, y Steven Cooke. ‘Sublethal consequences of urban life for wild vertebrates.’ Environmental Reviews 24, nº 4 (June 2016): 416-425.
Braidotti, Rosi. ‘Becoming-world.’ In After Cosmopolitanism, edited by Rosi Braidotti, Patrick Hanafin and Bolette Blaagaard, 8-27. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Danowski, Déborah, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. The Ends of the World. Traducido por Rodrigo Nunes. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017.
Dean, Katharine R., et al. ‘Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic.’ PNAS 115, no. 6 (January 2018): 1304-1309.
Despret, Vinciane. What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? Buenos Aires: Cactus, 2018.
E. Butler, Octavia. Lilith’s Brood. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000.
Evans, Edward Payson. The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1906.
Faria, Catia. ‘[Death among flowers (‘Muerte entre las flores’ in original Spanish).’ Más allá de lo humano, de Antonio Giráldez López y Pablo Ibañez Ferrera, 97-107. Vigo: Bartlebooth, 2018.
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics. Editado por Michel Senellart, François Ewald y Alessandro Fontana. London: Palgrave Macmillan London, 1979.
Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble, Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
H. Case, Julie. Smithsonian Magazine. 7 de June de 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/these-portuguese-libraries-are-infested-batsand-they-it-way-180969276/.
H. Parsons, Michael, Peter B. Banks, Michael A. Deutsch, Robert F. Corrigan, and Jason Munshi-South Michael. ‘Trends in urban rat ecology: a framework to define the prevailing knowledge gaps and incentives for academia, pest management professionals (PMPs) and public health agencies to participate.’ Journal of Urban Ecology 3, no. 1 (2017): 1–8.
Iglesias Kuntz, Lucía, y Agnès Bardon. Unesco World Heritage Convention. 7 de July de 2019. https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2005/ (último acceso: 20 de February de 2023).
J. Trembley, Kyle. ‘Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir.’ Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 0, nº 0 (April 2022): 1-19.
K.Leguin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: ACE BOOKS, 1969.
Kaltmeier, Olaf. ‘Postkoloniale Geschichte(n). Repräsentationen, Temporalitäten und Geopolitiken des Wissens.’ En Schlüsselwerke der Postcolonial Studies, de Julia Reuter y Alexandra Karentzos, 203–214. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2012.
Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.
Metzger, Jonathan. ‘The city is not a menschenpark: Rethinking the tragedy of the Urban commons beyond the human/ non-human divide.’ In Urban Commons: Rethinking the City, edited by Christian Borch and Martin Kornberger, edited by Christian Borch and Martin Kornberger, 22-46. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Miessen, Markus. Crossbenching, Toward Participation as Critical Spatial Practice. London: Stenberg Press, 2016.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Vol. 4. London: Samuel Simmons, 1667.
Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: for a logic of future coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Morton, Timothy. “Where the Wild Things Are,” LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture 1 (2015), 60–65..
Perry, Gad, Clint W. Boal, Robin Verble, and Mark C. Wallace. ‘Good and Bad Urban Wildlife.’ En Problematic Wildlife II, de Francesco Maria Angelici y Lorenzo Rossi, 141-170. Rome: Springer, 2020.
Ruiz Serna, Daniel, and Carlos Del Cairo. ‘The Ontological Turn Debates on Modern Naturalism.’ Revista de estudios sociales, nº 55 (January 2016): 193-204.
Russ, Joana. The Female Man. New York: Bantam Books, 1975.
Shingne, Marie Carmen. ‘The more-than-human right to the city: A multispecies reevaluation.’ Journal of Urban Affairs 44, no. 2 (2022): 137–155.
Stillfried, Milena, Jörns Fickel, Konstantin Börner, Ulrich Wittstatt, Mike Heddergott, Sylvia Ortmann, Stephanie Kramer-Schadt and Alain C. Frantz. ‘Do cities represent sources, sinks or isolated islands for urban wild boar population structure?’ Journal of Applied Ecology 54 (February 2017): 272–281.
Stolze Lima, Tania. ‘ The two and its many : Reflections on perspectivism in a Tupi cosmology.’ Mana 2, nº 2 (1996): 21-47.
Donaldson, Sue and Will Kymlicka. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Taylor, Hollis. ‘Marginalized Voices.’ In Participatory research in more-than-human worlds, edited by Michelle Bastian, Owain Jones, Niamh Moore and Emma Roe, 38-53. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Taylor, Thomas. Vindication of the rights of brutes. Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1792.
Universidade d Coimbra. s.f. https://visit.uc.pt/en/space-list/joanina.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. ‘ Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.’ Mana 2, nº 2 (1996): 115-144.
Wittig, Monique. The lesbian body. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1975.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A vindication of the rights of woman : with strictures on moral and political subjects. Philadelphia: William Gibbons, 1792.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Aitor Frías-Sánchez, Joaquín Perailes-Santiago, Diego Jiménez-López
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
