The Question of Avian Aesthetics : An Ungendered Theory of Aesthetic Agency

Abstract: As humanity grapples with its significant global footprint in this era, there is a growing fascination with delving into the experiences and viewpoints of other animal species. This juncture offers an opportune moment to delve into the aesthetics of non-human animals by using diverse interdisciplinary methods and viewpoints. Insights of feminist aesthetics demonstrate how traditional understanding of aesthetics and aesthetic experience are heavily influenced by cultural assumptions about gender. Aesthetics as a humanistic discipline has determined the portrayal of non-human animals as beings with no capacity for aesthetic sensibility. In this thesis, I aim to bring to emergence the connection between human exceptionalist assumptions about aesthetics and the production of scientific knowledge about non-human animals. I defend the necessity of recognizing birds as beings with surprising and complex aesthetic sensibilities. Currently most scientists favor the adaptationist idea that the perception of beauty is influential in non-human animal lives only insofar as it serves to advertise fitness, and favor the reproduction and survival of the species. By weaving together insights from feminist philosophy of science and post-humanist studies of the human-animal bond, I present a framework capable of challenging human exceptionalist accounts of aesthetics. Particularly, I promote a methodology sensitive to the construction of gender in scientific portrayals of birds and their aesthetic preferences. I intertwine feminist critiques to pinpoint and challenge adumbrations of androcentrism in both animal sciences and aesthetics. Finally I examine, through an ungendered framework, instances of bowerbird behavior, and pinpoint aesthetic agency as an ability that we share in orchestration with other non-human animals. I conclude by proposing new avenues for research of non-human animal aesthetics.