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Radboud University 18 May 2017 Dies Natalis

The dissolving silence of René ten Bos

“I need to say hello To the crow.” (Captain Beefheart, Ice cream for crow)

A reek of crudeness

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

Imagine: you call out but there is no answer. Only silence. Your voice is nothing but an obscure breath of wind over the forest, the desert, the water – wherever you are. No more than a tremor in the air, no matter how desperate or enraged. There is no answer. The medium you are in no longer resonates. How absolutely and quite literally disconnected is a reality in which your voice can no longer form part of a network of recognisable and meaningful sounds? Is this what hell is like? There must have been one Hawaiian crow or Corvus Hawaiiensis that experienced something very close to this hell. You just heard this bird’s call. It once flew through the rain forests of the archipelago, but loss of habitat led to it becoming extinct in the wild. Imported species hastened its demise: rats and snakes stole eggs from its nests. Parasites are also mentioned, as is the hunt for rare feathers. You can probably easily imagine that somewhere in a forgotten corner of the rain forest one last Hawaiian crow sent a last tremor through the air. And then: silence, the silence of dissolution, when nothing respects the agreements once made. When the fabric of collectivity itself has rotted away. The last specimens were spotted in 2002. Since then the only specimens alive can be found in zoos. Expensive breeding programmes were launched, and in late 2016 people tried to re-introduce five specimens to Hawai. A few weeks later, three were found dead, following which the remaining two were quickly brought back to the safety of the zoo. It was as if the jungle didn’t want them anymore. How tragic is the fate of a crow? If we are to believe poetess Judith Herzberg, most of us see crows as ugly hard birds. Like magpies and seagulls. Not endearing birds, like whinchats, thrushes or nightingales. No, hardened city dwellers – accustomed to urban filth and decay. Scavengers surrounded, in the words of another poet, Harrie ter Balkt, by “a reek of crudeness”. Darkness, says ter Balkt, is a good friend to the crow, with its crooked nail-like beak, always eager to pick at “the wrong things in the wrong places”. The crow does not have a nice reputation. It is antipoetic. Let’s be honest: are you saddened by the fate of the crow you just heard? Is Hawaii not perfectly fine without its crows? After that last tremor through the air, life on the island went on as usual. But maybe you should think a little further. The Hawaiian crow is not just any crow. And it was not particularly well adapted to the urban setting. Its home was the rain forest. It also suffered from what some extinction biologists call “ecological naïveté”. This refers to the fact that certain endemic species do not automatically recognise invasive newcomers as a threat. These species see no reason to assume that creatures such as , when they see them for the first time, would be dangerous. We happen to know that the first Western travellers to reach remote islands were always surprised by the fact that indigenous animals seemed to see no reason to flee. We know for certain that the Hawaiian crow warmly welcomed people to his biotope and accompanied them, hopping from branch to branch, as if to emphasise his duty as a host. We also know that this crow must have been a very intelligent animal, an animal with a complex social and emotional life, an animal that for all kinds of reasons has been described as a “feathered monkey”. Yes, of all clever crows, the Hawaiian crow may well have been the cleverest. I believe it was Tom Waits who once sang that crows, if approached by humans while nesting, will not, unlike many other species, attack, but instead start building a decoy nest, a strategy we invariably fail to see through. Crows are usually too clever for us, but the Hawaiian crow could not cope any longer, and saw its world fall to pieces.

Diffuse extinction

Extinction is intimately linked to the concept of loss. But do we actually know what it is that we have lost? And is this loss experienced as loss? Most people in this room will never have heard of the Corvus Hawaiiensis. Nor will they have heard of the thylacine, the golden toad, the Saudi gazelle, the Caribbean monk seal or the Japanese sea lion – all animals that have died out in this century or the last. It is difficult to miss something if you’ve never heard of it. After all, you cannot lose something you did not even know you had. One of the problems of endangered species is that most of them are not very spectacular. They are often rodents, frogs, or worse still, beetles. What applies to crows may apply even more to such unspectacular species: Who cares about their fate? Add to this the fact that we have not even mapped most animal species yet. The British philosopher Timothy Morton once wrote that is not a movie that can be shown on TV. The same applies to species extinction. Extinction is usually a complex process. When it comes to extinction, loss - if experienced at all - is diffuse. Some animals, such as the Angola sable antelope, were declared extinct only to be rediscovered later. People hope to bring other species, such as the above-mentioned thylacine, back to life by cloning, a process referred to as de-extinction. This word, “de-extinction”, exemplifies such bravado that we may well ask ourselves whether its proponents are aware of how complex the processes they are dealing with are. Would Tasmanian fauna really benefit from the reintroduction of the thylacine? Is there still room for such a species? And to make it more interesting still: are we absolutely sure that this species is extinct? Many extinct species are given the status of cryptid: a species of which we do not know for sure whether it still exists. Extinction biology can easily drift towards cryptozoology – the thylacine or the crow then acquire a nearly mythical status, like the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster. Having said this, the average extinction biologist is fully aware of the diffuse nature of extinction. According to Australian researcher Thom van Dooren, to whom I owe most of my story about the Hawaiian crow, such processes rarely have “clear edges”. Which is why researchers distinguish different types of extinction. Some are named after great biologists from the past. I will give you a few examples. A Linnaean extinction occurs when something goes wrong in the relationship between a species and its living environment, leading to the population decreasing until there are none left. A Wallacean extinction occurs when there is strong reason to suspect that a species is extinct, but the situation is not entirely clear, for example because the species in question has not been systematically studied or because the area where it lives is largely inaccessible. A third type of extinction is not named after a great biologist: the Phoenix extinction occurs when the species has become extinct, but there is still DNA material available, which in turn leads to speculation about Phoenix-like . This is the case for the thylacine in Tasmania, but also the woolly mammoths on the Siberian island of Wrangel. Ecological extinction is yet another type: the species may not have become entirely extinct, but it no longer has a function in the ecosystem of which it was part. What is, in concrete terms, the ecological role of the Amur leopard if there are only 30 or 40 of them left in the wild? The positive thing about these four types of extinction is, of course, that they keep hope alive: there has been some damage, but there is also somehow the possibility of recovery. In 2015, the World Nature Fund announced that the number of Amur leopards had doubled: to 60, maybe even 80. In South Korea researchers are apparently seriously working on cloning the mammoth back into existence – which would be ideal for the international ivory trade. Potential successes in the fight against extinction simply appeal to us more than a real, unambiguous extinction. This kind of real extinction occurs when there is no more genetic material available and the number of specimens in the wild is less than 1. Hard don’t make us cheerful. When it comes to animals, especially charismatic animals, we much prefer diffuse extinction. Some philosophers and ecologists are even so saddened by radical extinction that they opt nowadays for the extinction of our own species. These advocates of so-called voluntary extinction argue that the planet can still recover, even if the conditio sine qua non is that we ourselves are no longer there to reap the benefits. Indeed, the fact that we – and we alone – have always wanted to reap the benefits, is precisely the reason why global extinction is so rampant. Let there be no misunderstanding about this: extinction has been around since the dawn of time, but it is happening incredibly fast now, so fast that Elizabeth Kolbert, a well-known American science , seriously speaks of the “sixth wave of mass extinction”. What does this mean? It means that extinction has not been so extensive since a meteorite hit Yucatan a long time ago. The cause: humans. Humans are therefore a kind of meteorite. This is a terse and violent metaphor: a meteorite hits, and humans imitate this effect. Homo sapiens is an invasive, destructive and violent species. All these metaphors are based on overwhelming scientific . I will list here a few facts borrowed from the work of the famous blind marine biologist and geologist Geerat Vermeij. When humans first landed in America approximately 15,000 to 40,000 years ago, the continent must have teemed with large animal species: giant ground sloths, glyptodonts, mastodons and all kinds of large hoofed animals. Within a few thousands or tens of thousands of years, most of these species had disappeared. Ten thousand years ago – before the onset of the infamous Neolithic Revolution – in North America alone, 33 of the 45 genera of the larger species (heavier than 44 kilo) had already become extinct. Similar and more dramatic data can easily be gathered for other continents. There is also overwhelming evidence that these extinctions were ecologically significant. When large numbers of hoofed animals disappear, this has immediate consequences for the environment: grass is no longer grazed, fertilized, trampled, etc. Relatively lush grasslands in Northern Siberia, Alaska and made room for the significantly less productive tundra. When large herbivores disappeared from South America following the appearance of humans, the rain forest lost its open character and increasingly developed a closed canopy. So if you were under the impression that the Amazon as we know it now is a natural primeval forest, let me disenchant you: the Amazon too is shaped by human influence. Humans are a catastrophe, much more so than rats, snakes, weasels, foxes and other notorious agents of extinction. This is why some people say that a species like ours has long ago lost its moral-existential legitimation. It would be better for us to pack up and leave. An attractive thought, according to some – let’s all take a pill – but hard to explain to people with children, let alone the children themselves. What I find disturbing about the voluntary movement is that philosophers apparently find the extinction of our own species infinitely more fascinating than that of other species. I guess you could call it a kind of negative narcissism.

A world with a sole survivor

The above-mentioned Van Dooren has bemoaned the fact that the extinction of other species does not make for a grand enough story. Only small stories that may appeal to the imagination of the few – the extinction of a bird in Hawaii or a marsupial in Tasmania will touch some people more than others – but do not as a rule move people to action. Typical extinction literature – Van Dooren himself, Kolbert, Quammen and a few others – may bring us many tales of threatened or extinct animal species, but these cannot easily be made into a gripping synthesis. These narratives seem to resist overarching arguments that might convince everyone. Extinction, tragic as it is, cannot easily be articulated along the lines of the fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution, or the Holocaust. Without a doubt, this is due to the fact that people are not the primary target of this tragedy. Clearly, for many of us the story of the extinct golden toad is less dramatic than a story of human self-extermination. Empathy with amphibians, however commendable, is not so easily evoked. Another reason for the absence of a single dramatic narrative is that most extinctions are gradual, so the tragedy remains invisible. Even the meteorite that once hit Yucatan was not as dramatic as you might think. The fact that in its wake dinosaurs disappeared en masse may have other causes, such as the fact that they had suffered for a long time from competition with mammals. There is much debate surrounding this issue. The meteorite may have been only the final push over the edge. In any case, gradual processes that last thousands of years do not make good topics for drama or history. Narratives tend to belong to genres in which the timeframe is kept short enough to make the action exciting. We may think of other reasons why the larger extinction narrative is not gaining momentum. People tend to think of extinction as so inevitable that resistance is pointless. Nature follows its own unfathomable ways. If animals suffer because a specific species has become too dominant, then this too is an aspect of Nature, and all we can do is resign ourselves. Humans as the final winners – what can we do about it? Yes, Nature and us. Scholars have often remarked that the concept of ‘Nature’ can only arise in excessively cultured societies. As the German eco-historian Joachim Radkau argues: only societies that have solved the hunger problem are able to see beauty in marshlands or rocky outcrops. If you have to worry every day about food that may or may not be available, you will not waste much time on disappearing animal species. The recent indignation over the “” of a rhinoceros in a French zoo is in this respect a sign of hypocrisy and luxury. And since we are on the topic: Murder? Is that the right word? Legally speaking, it is still impossible for us to murder animals. Animals may be killed with impunity. Just ask political parties committed to bringing order to the Oostvaardersplassen by shooting all kinds of animals there. If shooting animals was murder, then maybe extinction would look like , and we would have our great historical event. But most of us don’t think of it as mass murder, and so it does not qualify as history with a capital H. At worst, a tragic side effect. on our way to the great anthropomorphisation of the planet. This raises interesting questions. For example, philosophers have written extensively about animal rights, but strangely enough hardly anything about extinction. Should we, for instance, grant animals the right to non-extinction? This immediately leads to other questions. Is extinction of a species comparable to the of a single individual? Extinction seems to be larger than death, if only because it seems to attack being or existence itself. At the same time, the death of a single individual usually hits us harder, as if extinction is too abstract and too perplexing for us to really grasp. Which is precisely what is so appealing about the above- mentioned human extinction: in my search for philosophical texts on this theme, I encountered many more texts on the extinction of our own species than on that of other species. We can therefore conclude again, and this cannot be emphasised enough, that philosophers are a highly anthropocentric breed. We could name other reasons for this absence of drama surrounding extinction. It may be that we are far more like the contemporaries of Georges Cuvier than we want to admit. Cuvier was the first around 1800 to provide proof of extinction, but he was met with a storm of censure and disbelief, because many people felt that nature was a place of abundance, a place of no scarcity, but also of no history. Nature, as a place of plenty. The idea of the sea as mare liberum – an idea that, as we know, was defended by our own Hugo de Groot – is based on the thought that nature knows no scarcity. Many wondered how in a world without scarcity it was possible for animal species to become extinct? The simple observation that a single specimen could die had apparently never led to the thought that an entire species could die out too. You could fish fish out of existence without a second thought. The fish were bound to return sooner or later. It was all part of what was viewed for a long time as the sovereignty of the sea or, more generally, the sovereignty of Nature. This sovereignty also implied that Nature followed its own course and operated independently of humans: a machine set in motion by God and that we mere humans were unable to really harm. The latter thought remains indestructible. After offering a fantastic overview of the cause of extinction and other disruptions, Vermeij feels that it is time for some comforting stories and points to the fact that despite very severe catastrophes, our planet has managed to sustain life for 3.5 billion years. Even under the most precarious circumstances, life continuously proves to be “amazingly tenacious”. This may well be the main reason why extinction is not a major narrative in biology: because life, life that keeps going no matter what, is the major narrative. Which of course makes it interesting to consider what kind of life keeps on going no matter what. Vermeij mentions two categories of species. First of all species that have great propagation abilities even under difficult circumstances. Examples here are cosmopolites such as plankton, insects, viruses, or ferns whose spores can be spread around by the wind or that latch on to drift wood. Secondly, there are species that have a very quick reproduction rate with the ability to withstand difficult circumstances reasonably or well. Examples include all kinds of plants and crops. Vermeij does not exclude the possibility that humans are included among these extinction survivors. After all humans are cosmopolitan, they easily propagate thanks to their technology, and although they do not have a super-fast reproduction rate, they do possess an incredible ability to protect their offspring against dangers from outside. Now we can see why the human extinction movement would have to be voluntary: humans will presumably survive the sixth wave of mass extinction. I believe that it was biologist Ed Wilson who once said that humans differ from other primates in one respect: their reproduction pattern more closely resembles that of bacteria or viruses than of orangutans or chimpanzees. At this point I would like to introduce you to another half-forgotten protagonist. I am referring to the Dutch writer and poet Jacques Hamelink (1939), whose work largely focused on the ruthless battle humans have waged against Nature. Some of you may have read Ranonkel, of de geschiedenis van een verzelving (Turban buttercup, or the history of a coming into oneself) a 1969 volume in which Nature slowly but surely turns into a large rotting slaughterhouse as a result of human activity as symbolised by soldier Papa Boem. Years later Hamelink wrote a beautiful poem entitled “De bomen werden sinds eeuwen terneergedrukt” (“The trees have been oppressed for centuries”) in which he tries to imagine a world with only one survivor:

Het enige dier is de mens, in zijn teken - Een breekbare regenboog - bedrijft hij vogelvlug liefde En huist in zichzelf verdeeld in vliesdun geworden kathedralen en schelpen. De stilte hangt ademloos in ontbinding. De aarde klinkt steeds verder in.

(The only animal left is man, in his sign – A fragile rainbow – he makes silver-quick love Then houses in himself, divided in paper-thin cathedrals and shells. The silence hangs breathless in dissolution. The Earth folds ever further upon itself.)

Yes, sometimes you need poets: you don’t always understand exactly what they mean, but this image does speak to the imagination: the human as sole survivor in a chalky world. The Earth folding ever further upon itself. And now think again of that crow on Hawaii, the one I began this story with. That crow must have known something of this folding upon itself, of this dissolving silence.