For every Bird a Nest
Visual Essay for Final Paper for 903 Contemporary Readings: Ecosystems of Thought
April 2022
April 2022
For every Bird a Nest--
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round--
Wherefore when boughs are free--
Households in every tree--
Pilgrim be found?
Perhaps a home too high--
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires--
Perhaps of twig so fine--
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires--
The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house--
Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?
143- Emily Dickinson
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round--
Wherefore when boughs are free--
Households in every tree--
Pilgrim be found?
Perhaps a home too high--
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires--
Perhaps of twig so fine--
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires--
The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house--
Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?
143- Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson wrote, “for Every Bird a Nest” and, similarly, for every artist-philosopher an aesthetic object appears, a break “in the usual order of things” (Malabou, 1). This essay explores a found bird’s nest as an object of aesthetic and philosophical inquiry through the ideas of three philosophers (Figure 1). First, I translate Catherine Malabou’s theories about accident and destruction from a human centered to a multispecies perspective. Next, I use Isabelle Stenger’s ideas on reclaiming animism to speculate on the nest as a magical object. Third, I extend Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the halo to the nest.
On a daily walk with my dog, an object captured my peripheral attention; its tawny color and round form setting it apart from green grass growing on the flat open strip of ground between the sidewalk and street. The nest was distinctly out of place, an accident waiting for discovery. Before picking it up, I looked around to determine the original location of the nest, wondering: Could I replace it in its spot? With no trees or bushes close by I assumed that it had fallen from a nearby utility pole or had been blown far from its sheltered location by the wind. Unused, it was now abandoned. I gently picked it up with gloved hands and sheltered it from the wind by nestling it against my body as I walked home. Examining and photographing the nest for this essay, I noticed its fragility and weightlessness. With every shift and touch a minor bit was left behind. Visible evidence that my touch precipitates the nests’ disintegration generates a tiny pinch of anxiety; particularly given that I have designated it an aesthetic object of philosophical study.
The nest is approximately 3.5 inches in diameter and 2 inches tall at its highest point (Figure 2). The shallow bowl shape is assembled from plant materials that include slender twigs, dried grasses, and dried pine and cedar needles. Two thin ribbons of plastic debris are woven into the bottom of the nest (Figure 3). Closer inspection reveals bits of dryer lint, building insulation, human hair, animal hair (possibly dog, cat, deer, raccoon, or squirrel), bird down, and feathers. Each material element has a distinct color, including shades of brown, grey, and white; combining to convey an overall tone close to natural sienna. The materials of the nest are not woven in a mathematical grid structure, rather, they are an uneven mesh, each element threading through those surrounding it.
Aesthetic description of nest leads to an impulse for categorization, I wonder: What species of bird made the nest? “Caliology”, the study of birds’ nests, derives from the Greek “kalia” (καλιά) meaning dwelling and the Proto-Indo-European root “kel” meaning to cover, conceal, or save.[1] Consulting the Cornell Lab of Ornithology allows for a quick survey of nest shapes, materials, sizes, common birds in the vicinity, and months of the year various types of nests are built in our region. While it is difficult to definitively ascertain the species of the builder, evidence narrows the field to the female cardinal, with the male sometimes helping bring bits for her. The shedding bits indicate that the nest is not glued together with saliva or spiderwebs which some bird species (not cardinals) use to create structural integrity. According to the Lab, the cardinal builds her nest with four layers. “She crushes twigs with her beak until they’re pliable, then turns in the nest to bend the twigs around her body and push them into a cup shape with her feet” (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). The negative space of the hollow, the size of her twisting and turning body, is an empty form holding promise for regeneration. Over a period of 3-9 days, the cardinal crafts the nest through incremental accumulation and shaping. She carefully scans the environment, selects each bit with her beak, and flies it back to the nesting site. The nest is crafted as a temporary dwelling for laying, protecting her eggs, and eventually nurturing her newly hatched chicks. Cardinal nests are only used for one brood with a new nest is built for successive broods of chicks.
The aesthetic qualities of the nest, my documentation process, and speculation about its origins lays the ground for our aesthetic-philosophical inquiry. In the Ontology of the Accident (2009), Malabou discusses “destructive plasticity” within the context of neuroscience and the human brain. The bird’s nest is an opportunity to consider Malabou’s ideas on destruction and accident through a multispecies lens, bringing together avian and human experience. The nest, a form reorganized from the fragmentary remains of other things, is a figure of destructive construction. Malabou contends, “The fact that all creation can only occur at the price of a deconstructive counterpart is a fundamental law of life. It does not contradict life; it makes life possible” (4). Decaying vegetative life, remnants of animal life, and the detritus of human activity are building materials. A fallen pine needle, a strand of hair, a strip of plastic packaging; become transformed through cardinal’s project of shelter making. The shape of the nest is a figure of sheltering and its material make up a figure of gathering, as the remnants of one life form supplement another.
In addition to cycles of destruction and reconstruction, Malabou helps us enter the concept of the accident from a multispecies perspective. For Malabou, “recognizing the ontology of the accident is a philosophically difficult task; it must be acknowledged as a law that is simultaneously logical and biological, but a law that does not allow us to anticipate its instances” (30). The accident is a break in which unexpected and unpredictable events surface from invisible undercurrents of possibility. The story of this particular nest begins with an event of accident. For the bird, the fall of the nest from its sheltered location is an accident of loss that disrupts and delays a reproductive timeline. For the author of this essay, the accident of the nest is an event of discovery and inspiration. Mimicking the bird’s gesture of gathering, I pick up the nest from my landscape and bring it my site of accumulation. I examine, document, and use the object to weave an essay with words. Applying Malabou’s destructive plasticity beyond the scope of human identity to consider multispecies; an accident for one becomes a possibility for another. The nest traverses across intersections of avian, animal, plant, and human life. In Section 6 of the essay, Malabou challenges the concept of negative judgement to propose negative possibility.[2] Instead of the accident being a break that rejects and excludes she proposes thinking of the accident through fluidity of possibility (90). To that end she claims, “the history of being itself consists perhaps of nothing but a series of accidents which, in every era and without hope of return, dangerously disfigure the meaning of essence” (91). This fluid notion of identity shaped by accident and disconnected from binaries of negative and positive value judgments and expectations is an inevitable aspect of multispecies thinking in which things and beings are always becoming parts of other things and beings. The nest suggests a re-imagining of Malabou’s destructive plasticity as “productive destruction”, keeping the tension of her words and adding an aesthetic element of creation.
Like Malabou, Stengers’ ideas on magic challenge essentialist thinking. In the essay “Reclaiming Animism” Stenger’s suggests we use magic to reclaim animism. Approaching the nest as a magical object is a way to practice Stenger’s method. To avoid an animism that speaks for others Stengers is careful to suggests we remain situated in our singular contexts (1). Earlier in the essay I articulated my singular context: how the nest appeared to me, my gathering, and my documentation. Following Stengers, I cannot speak for the cardinal, only for myself. As a magical object, in Stengers sense of the term, the nest is a device for activating multispecies thinking. The accident of my discovery stands against the cardinal’s loss. Deterioration created by my documentation contrasts with the cardinal’s careful craftsmanship. Materials gathered and shaped by the cardinal juxtapose with my creation of text about the nest. Stengers suggests the assemblage as a way of thinking across species:
"An assemblage, for Deleuze and Guattari, is the coming together of heterogeneous components, and such a coming together is the first and last word of existence. I do not first exist and then enter into assemblages. Rather, my existence is my very participation in assemblages, because I am not the same person when I write and as I am when I wonder about the efficacy of the text after it is written down” (7).
A magical object, the nest lures me to notice my participation in my suburban environment through nuanced awareness of assemblages that predate my entrance to the scene. According to Stengers, the assemblage has agency not me, that is, the nest “animates” me rather than vice versa (7).
Stengers asks us to “revive more compromised words” such as “magic” in order to be able to speak or write differently about an object or event (7). Objects of magic, or what Stengers calls “reflexive assemblages”, tell stories through aesthetics as well as words (7). With that lens in mind, I am enticed to think that the nest has cast a spell on me. Captivated by its craftmanship and its purpose, I daydream about homemaking and caregiving across species. The cardinal’s nest building, a preparation for life to come, is a series of minor decisions (this twig, that adjustment).The composite of delicately interwoven parts conjures the million tiny decisions that make up a life (this decision, that path). The accident of the nest and its fragility remind us of the ever-present threat of dissolution and loss. Time travelling through memories and imagined futures the nest lures me into thinking about motherhood as an interlaced spiral, forming a protective inner hollow and an outward reaching feathery edge at the same time. Previously tightly wound embodied feelings unravel and circulate; hovering at the edge of translation into words, almost impossible to describe. Stengers explains, “Protected by the metaphor, we may then express the experience of an agency that does not belong to us even if it includes us, but an “us” as it is lured into feeling” (7). The intricate weave of the nest is a magic spiral that evokes a circulation of affects, extending beyond its edges.
Along the edges of the nest, threadlike bits of woven parts poke out into space surrounding the nest with an almost invisible halo. In this final section I consider the nest through Agamben’s concept of the halo as described in The Coming Community. Agamben begins describing the concept of the halo with a parable about the world to come in which a rabbi explains, “in order to establish a reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. It is sufficient to displace this cup or this bush or this stone just a little and thus everything” (53). Composed of found parts the nest is a composite of “displacements” that do not significantly change the form of the thing they were shed from. For example, the pine tree drops dry needles and is still a tree and the dog is still a dog despite shedding fur. Agamben proposes the “tiny displacement” as a zone of possibility which he then connects visually and conceptually to Saint Thomas’ treatise on halos. Interpreting Saint Thomas, Agamben writes, “The halo is this supplement added to perfection-something like the vibration of that which is perfect, the glow at the edges” (55). Focusing on the edges of the nest we notice the halo of tiny hairs and plant material, extending out to create a “glow at the edges” (Figure 4). While the extended bits might play a structural role in terms of balance or mitigation of wind effects, conceptually the nest’s halo suggest a zone of indeterminacy.
Formally, the nest is round like a halo, but it is not surrounding a head as in religious imagery. The halo of the nest encircles a hollow void that vibrates with the possibility and precarity of fledgling life. The halo softens the edges of the nest and gestures out to the surroundings. The thin hairs and grasses reveal aspects of the nest that are rendered invisible when they are woven into the whole. The vibration between interior and exterior is a zone for multispecies thinking. On the halo as a zone, Agamben writes, “One can think of the halo, in this sense, as a zone in which possibility and reality, potentiality and actuality, become indistinguishable” (56). Entering the zone of the nest builder engages us in paying attention to and noticing our interdependence with our surroundings. The halo is a boundary layer, both protective and connective.
Finally, to end with a speculation, the halo suggests a broader connection that enables Agamben’s “tiny displacement” to operate on a planetary scale. If we re-imagine the circular halo as a spherical one, the halo might be thought of as the critical zone of planet earth. The critical zone is defined as the “living, breathing, constantly evolving boundary layer where rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms interact”, in other words, the zone supporting planetary life.[3] Critical zone studies develop collaborations across separate disciplines studying the earth to research it as a complex entity and develop necessary cross disciplinary languages. As a zone of possibility, the halo is the zone in which a “tiny displacement “can change the trajectory of planetary distress. In this way the nest and the halo remind us of our planet’s fragile “dance around the sun”, as Emily Dickinson concludes in her poem:
Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Translated by Michael Hardt, University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Caliology | Etymology, Origin and Meaning of Caliology by Etymonline. https://www.etymonline.com/word/caliology. Accessed 7 Apr. 2022.
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Malabou, Catherine. Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity. Translated by Carolyn Shread, Polity, 2009.
Northern Cardinal Life History, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Cardinal/lifehistory. Accessed 5 Apr. 2022.
The Critical Zone | National Critical Zone Observatory. https://czo-archive.criticalzone.org/national/research/the-critical-zone-1national/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.
[1] Caliology | Etymology, Origin and Meaning of Caliology by Etymonline. https://www.etymonline.com/word/caliology. Accessed 7 Apr. 2022.
[2] Malabou explains negative judgement in the following passage: “When we formulate a negative judgement in logic, in other words, when we pronounce the non-attribution of such and such a predicate to such and such a substance we symbolically and intellectually repeat a primitive gesture of excluding and spitting out. Negation thus has a clear affective origin: rejection. The only possibility of being that such and such an object has when it is judged harmful or bad by the ego is that of being expelled from being. Not reduced to non-being, but well and truly thrown out of being. Excluded from the register of beings. In this sense the repressed or denied is ontological spit. A rejection from presence” (81).
[3] The Critical Zone | National Critical Zone Observatory. https://czo-archive.criticalzone.org/national/research/the-critical-zone-1national/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.
On a daily walk with my dog, an object captured my peripheral attention; its tawny color and round form setting it apart from green grass growing on the flat open strip of ground between the sidewalk and street. The nest was distinctly out of place, an accident waiting for discovery. Before picking it up, I looked around to determine the original location of the nest, wondering: Could I replace it in its spot? With no trees or bushes close by I assumed that it had fallen from a nearby utility pole or had been blown far from its sheltered location by the wind. Unused, it was now abandoned. I gently picked it up with gloved hands and sheltered it from the wind by nestling it against my body as I walked home. Examining and photographing the nest for this essay, I noticed its fragility and weightlessness. With every shift and touch a minor bit was left behind. Visible evidence that my touch precipitates the nests’ disintegration generates a tiny pinch of anxiety; particularly given that I have designated it an aesthetic object of philosophical study.
The nest is approximately 3.5 inches in diameter and 2 inches tall at its highest point (Figure 2). The shallow bowl shape is assembled from plant materials that include slender twigs, dried grasses, and dried pine and cedar needles. Two thin ribbons of plastic debris are woven into the bottom of the nest (Figure 3). Closer inspection reveals bits of dryer lint, building insulation, human hair, animal hair (possibly dog, cat, deer, raccoon, or squirrel), bird down, and feathers. Each material element has a distinct color, including shades of brown, grey, and white; combining to convey an overall tone close to natural sienna. The materials of the nest are not woven in a mathematical grid structure, rather, they are an uneven mesh, each element threading through those surrounding it.
Aesthetic description of nest leads to an impulse for categorization, I wonder: What species of bird made the nest? “Caliology”, the study of birds’ nests, derives from the Greek “kalia” (καλιά) meaning dwelling and the Proto-Indo-European root “kel” meaning to cover, conceal, or save.[1] Consulting the Cornell Lab of Ornithology allows for a quick survey of nest shapes, materials, sizes, common birds in the vicinity, and months of the year various types of nests are built in our region. While it is difficult to definitively ascertain the species of the builder, evidence narrows the field to the female cardinal, with the male sometimes helping bring bits for her. The shedding bits indicate that the nest is not glued together with saliva or spiderwebs which some bird species (not cardinals) use to create structural integrity. According to the Lab, the cardinal builds her nest with four layers. “She crushes twigs with her beak until they’re pliable, then turns in the nest to bend the twigs around her body and push them into a cup shape with her feet” (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). The negative space of the hollow, the size of her twisting and turning body, is an empty form holding promise for regeneration. Over a period of 3-9 days, the cardinal crafts the nest through incremental accumulation and shaping. She carefully scans the environment, selects each bit with her beak, and flies it back to the nesting site. The nest is crafted as a temporary dwelling for laying, protecting her eggs, and eventually nurturing her newly hatched chicks. Cardinal nests are only used for one brood with a new nest is built for successive broods of chicks.
The aesthetic qualities of the nest, my documentation process, and speculation about its origins lays the ground for our aesthetic-philosophical inquiry. In the Ontology of the Accident (2009), Malabou discusses “destructive plasticity” within the context of neuroscience and the human brain. The bird’s nest is an opportunity to consider Malabou’s ideas on destruction and accident through a multispecies lens, bringing together avian and human experience. The nest, a form reorganized from the fragmentary remains of other things, is a figure of destructive construction. Malabou contends, “The fact that all creation can only occur at the price of a deconstructive counterpart is a fundamental law of life. It does not contradict life; it makes life possible” (4). Decaying vegetative life, remnants of animal life, and the detritus of human activity are building materials. A fallen pine needle, a strand of hair, a strip of plastic packaging; become transformed through cardinal’s project of shelter making. The shape of the nest is a figure of sheltering and its material make up a figure of gathering, as the remnants of one life form supplement another.
In addition to cycles of destruction and reconstruction, Malabou helps us enter the concept of the accident from a multispecies perspective. For Malabou, “recognizing the ontology of the accident is a philosophically difficult task; it must be acknowledged as a law that is simultaneously logical and biological, but a law that does not allow us to anticipate its instances” (30). The accident is a break in which unexpected and unpredictable events surface from invisible undercurrents of possibility. The story of this particular nest begins with an event of accident. For the bird, the fall of the nest from its sheltered location is an accident of loss that disrupts and delays a reproductive timeline. For the author of this essay, the accident of the nest is an event of discovery and inspiration. Mimicking the bird’s gesture of gathering, I pick up the nest from my landscape and bring it my site of accumulation. I examine, document, and use the object to weave an essay with words. Applying Malabou’s destructive plasticity beyond the scope of human identity to consider multispecies; an accident for one becomes a possibility for another. The nest traverses across intersections of avian, animal, plant, and human life. In Section 6 of the essay, Malabou challenges the concept of negative judgement to propose negative possibility.[2] Instead of the accident being a break that rejects and excludes she proposes thinking of the accident through fluidity of possibility (90). To that end she claims, “the history of being itself consists perhaps of nothing but a series of accidents which, in every era and without hope of return, dangerously disfigure the meaning of essence” (91). This fluid notion of identity shaped by accident and disconnected from binaries of negative and positive value judgments and expectations is an inevitable aspect of multispecies thinking in which things and beings are always becoming parts of other things and beings. The nest suggests a re-imagining of Malabou’s destructive plasticity as “productive destruction”, keeping the tension of her words and adding an aesthetic element of creation.
Like Malabou, Stengers’ ideas on magic challenge essentialist thinking. In the essay “Reclaiming Animism” Stenger’s suggests we use magic to reclaim animism. Approaching the nest as a magical object is a way to practice Stenger’s method. To avoid an animism that speaks for others Stengers is careful to suggests we remain situated in our singular contexts (1). Earlier in the essay I articulated my singular context: how the nest appeared to me, my gathering, and my documentation. Following Stengers, I cannot speak for the cardinal, only for myself. As a magical object, in Stengers sense of the term, the nest is a device for activating multispecies thinking. The accident of my discovery stands against the cardinal’s loss. Deterioration created by my documentation contrasts with the cardinal’s careful craftsmanship. Materials gathered and shaped by the cardinal juxtapose with my creation of text about the nest. Stengers suggests the assemblage as a way of thinking across species:
"An assemblage, for Deleuze and Guattari, is the coming together of heterogeneous components, and such a coming together is the first and last word of existence. I do not first exist and then enter into assemblages. Rather, my existence is my very participation in assemblages, because I am not the same person when I write and as I am when I wonder about the efficacy of the text after it is written down” (7).
A magical object, the nest lures me to notice my participation in my suburban environment through nuanced awareness of assemblages that predate my entrance to the scene. According to Stengers, the assemblage has agency not me, that is, the nest “animates” me rather than vice versa (7).
Stengers asks us to “revive more compromised words” such as “magic” in order to be able to speak or write differently about an object or event (7). Objects of magic, or what Stengers calls “reflexive assemblages”, tell stories through aesthetics as well as words (7). With that lens in mind, I am enticed to think that the nest has cast a spell on me. Captivated by its craftmanship and its purpose, I daydream about homemaking and caregiving across species. The cardinal’s nest building, a preparation for life to come, is a series of minor decisions (this twig, that adjustment).The composite of delicately interwoven parts conjures the million tiny decisions that make up a life (this decision, that path). The accident of the nest and its fragility remind us of the ever-present threat of dissolution and loss. Time travelling through memories and imagined futures the nest lures me into thinking about motherhood as an interlaced spiral, forming a protective inner hollow and an outward reaching feathery edge at the same time. Previously tightly wound embodied feelings unravel and circulate; hovering at the edge of translation into words, almost impossible to describe. Stengers explains, “Protected by the metaphor, we may then express the experience of an agency that does not belong to us even if it includes us, but an “us” as it is lured into feeling” (7). The intricate weave of the nest is a magic spiral that evokes a circulation of affects, extending beyond its edges.
Along the edges of the nest, threadlike bits of woven parts poke out into space surrounding the nest with an almost invisible halo. In this final section I consider the nest through Agamben’s concept of the halo as described in The Coming Community. Agamben begins describing the concept of the halo with a parable about the world to come in which a rabbi explains, “in order to establish a reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. It is sufficient to displace this cup or this bush or this stone just a little and thus everything” (53). Composed of found parts the nest is a composite of “displacements” that do not significantly change the form of the thing they were shed from. For example, the pine tree drops dry needles and is still a tree and the dog is still a dog despite shedding fur. Agamben proposes the “tiny displacement” as a zone of possibility which he then connects visually and conceptually to Saint Thomas’ treatise on halos. Interpreting Saint Thomas, Agamben writes, “The halo is this supplement added to perfection-something like the vibration of that which is perfect, the glow at the edges” (55). Focusing on the edges of the nest we notice the halo of tiny hairs and plant material, extending out to create a “glow at the edges” (Figure 4). While the extended bits might play a structural role in terms of balance or mitigation of wind effects, conceptually the nest’s halo suggest a zone of indeterminacy.
Formally, the nest is round like a halo, but it is not surrounding a head as in religious imagery. The halo of the nest encircles a hollow void that vibrates with the possibility and precarity of fledgling life. The halo softens the edges of the nest and gestures out to the surroundings. The thin hairs and grasses reveal aspects of the nest that are rendered invisible when they are woven into the whole. The vibration between interior and exterior is a zone for multispecies thinking. On the halo as a zone, Agamben writes, “One can think of the halo, in this sense, as a zone in which possibility and reality, potentiality and actuality, become indistinguishable” (56). Entering the zone of the nest builder engages us in paying attention to and noticing our interdependence with our surroundings. The halo is a boundary layer, both protective and connective.
Finally, to end with a speculation, the halo suggests a broader connection that enables Agamben’s “tiny displacement” to operate on a planetary scale. If we re-imagine the circular halo as a spherical one, the halo might be thought of as the critical zone of planet earth. The critical zone is defined as the “living, breathing, constantly evolving boundary layer where rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms interact”, in other words, the zone supporting planetary life.[3] Critical zone studies develop collaborations across separate disciplines studying the earth to research it as a complex entity and develop necessary cross disciplinary languages. As a zone of possibility, the halo is the zone in which a “tiny displacement “can change the trajectory of planetary distress. In this way the nest and the halo remind us of our planet’s fragile “dance around the sun”, as Emily Dickinson concludes in her poem:
Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?
Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Translated by Michael Hardt, University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Caliology | Etymology, Origin and Meaning of Caliology by Etymonline. https://www.etymonline.com/word/caliology. Accessed 7 Apr. 2022.
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Malabou, Catherine. Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity. Translated by Carolyn Shread, Polity, 2009.
Northern Cardinal Life History, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Cardinal/lifehistory. Accessed 5 Apr. 2022.
The Critical Zone | National Critical Zone Observatory. https://czo-archive.criticalzone.org/national/research/the-critical-zone-1national/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.
[1] Caliology | Etymology, Origin and Meaning of Caliology by Etymonline. https://www.etymonline.com/word/caliology. Accessed 7 Apr. 2022.
[2] Malabou explains negative judgement in the following passage: “When we formulate a negative judgement in logic, in other words, when we pronounce the non-attribution of such and such a predicate to such and such a substance we symbolically and intellectually repeat a primitive gesture of excluding and spitting out. Negation thus has a clear affective origin: rejection. The only possibility of being that such and such an object has when it is judged harmful or bad by the ego is that of being expelled from being. Not reduced to non-being, but well and truly thrown out of being. Excluded from the register of beings. In this sense the repressed or denied is ontological spit. A rejection from presence” (81).
[3] The Critical Zone | National Critical Zone Observatory. https://czo-archive.criticalzone.org/national/research/the-critical-zone-1national/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2022.