FABULATING LIFE, UNLEARNING THE HUMAN: A MULTISPECIES ESSAY WITH ISABEL ZAPATA UM ENSAIO MULTIESPÉCIE COM ISABEL ZAPATA

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Martina Davidson

Abstract

This essay offers a reading of A whale is a country (2023), by Isabel Zapata, as a multispecies archive that challenges the coloniality of biological knowledge and opens cracks for imagining antispeciesist and decolonial pedagogies. Drawing on authors such as Ameli (2023), Haraway (2016), and Tsing (2005, 2015), I argue that figures like the whale, Laika, the snail, and the murmuration of birds emerge as co-educators and pedagogical specters. More than metaphors, they are worlds in themselves, destabilizing modern categories of classification and human exceptionalism. From a situated reading experience —in an airport, within the suspended time of a delayed flight— I outline what I call a multispecies fabulatory pedagogy: not a didactic manual, but a practice of attention, coexistence, and shared imagination.

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How to Cite
Davidson, M. (2025). FABULATING LIFE, UNLEARNING THE HUMAN: A MULTISPECIES ESSAY WITH ISABEL ZAPATA: UM ENSAIO MULTIESPÉCIE COM ISABEL ZAPATA. SBEnBio Biology Teaching Journal, 18(nesp.1), 766–780. https://doi.org/10.46667/renbio.v18inesp.1.2027
Section
Dossiê Temático: Ensino de Biologia diante do Antropoceno: fabulando respostas, experimentando caminhos

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