Chicken Little

(A Fable for Staying with the Trouble in Fearful Times)

Donna Haraway

Related terms: Capitalocene, Chthulucene, Plantationocene, Extractivism

Image credit: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga Commons/Lmbuga Galipedia); Teaño, Galicia, Spain; CC BY-SA 3.0

In near despair, Chicken Little leaves the terrifying kitchen where a line of broilers squatted, mesmerized in front of the screen; i.e., the glass window in the oven door showing the roasting fowl inside.

Crying the sky is falling, Chicken Little turns right into a timeplace named Anthropocene, with a signpost that reads “formerly known as The New World Order, Inc.,” and a little later called the Racial Capitalocene and Plantationocene.

Desperately hungry and pecking energetically, Chicken finds bits and bytes, bitcoins, neural chips, miniature surveillance cameras, weird synthetic genes, coal ash, mpox virus particles, and grains of cement left by 2000 lb. bombs. Riven with fear, Chicken realizes that they are walking on lithium mud under an information cloud, while ChatGPT-generated music, Trump’s campaign playlist, booms out “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” and “Ave Maria.” In the distance, Chicken sees a leering, orange-skinned human wearing a giant red tie swaying to “Ave Maria.” To Chicken’s horror, the Orange Man from that campaign became the U.S. President for the second time.

It’s true, gargles Chicken, “The sky is falling!”

Just then, sharp-eyed Chicken spots another sign, and they turn left, past a placard that reads, “You are now entering the Chthulucene, a placetime of thick presents, repossessed pasts, and still possible futures.” Ah, imagines Chicken, perhaps this is a timeplace for earthly flourishing in desperate times.

Perhaps.

Pecking even more desperately, Chicken finds tiny grains of hope, germinating seeds of viable futures, shiny leafy greens (perhaps chard from that yard over there?), that nourish insights and commitments. Chicken forages for kin in complex holobiomes and discovers webs and layers of symbionts of every scale in the vital mud. Chicken’s beady eyes spy spirals of dancers of many sorts, swirling into and out of myriad dimensions and planes. Ah, says Chicken, “This timeplace is thick, slimy, squishy, squiggly, and generative.” Here we can address swirling urgencies.

So, Chicken and all the denizens of the Chthulucene beat their wings together to whirl myriad insurgencies into being.

Suddenly, multitudes of broilers and battery hens stream from kitchens and animal factories all over the land, singing “Cows with Guns.” In the words of the anthem, in the nick of time to save their outgunned bovine kin “came the deafening roar of Chickens in Choppers” (Lyons 1996/Stuestol 2006).

 

Image credit: Video stills from “Cows With Guns”; song by Dana Lyons (1996), animation by Bjorn-Magne Stuesol (2006)

The Orange Man in the Red Tie ran for his life, pursued by angry birds. On screen after the disappearance of the Orange Man in the Red Tie, everybody watched Chicken Run again and again, until a very impressive boss hen kicked them out of the kitchen to face the big bad world and join the revolution.

Image credit: AI-generated image (GAN models)

Definitely lowering, the sky might be falling, but NOT YET and NOT ON OUR WATCH, the humanimals of every kind shout, roar, cheep, buzz, and hiss.

Later, tuckered out and still perplexed, Chicken Little clambered into their night roost, sustained by companions and dreaming of the coming day’s promise of high-quality scratch.

References

Lyons, Dana. 1996. “Cows with Guns,” track A1 on Cows with Guns, Reigning Records, cassette.

Stuestol, Bjorn-Magne. 2006. “Cows with Guns – the Original Animation” Song by Dana Lyons. Animation by Bjorn-Magne Stuestol. “Thermosion” YouTube channel, May 30, 2006, video, 5:08.