What a Feeling, Chirping in the Ceiling: Queering Posthuman Phenomenology with the Texas Field Cricket

Phenomenology has enjoyed an animal turn in more recent years, though authors involved in the movement often refuse to conduct phenomenological descriptions for fear of “projecting” human qualities onto non-human animals. Following Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, this paper argues that such a refusal maintains a straight line between “human” and “animal” and thus fails to dwell with the messiness inherent in humananimal relations. It is in this sense that posthuman phenomenology focused on animals could benefit from “queering.” To queer posthuman phenomenology would be to embrace the risk that we might not always get animals “right,” and to openourselves up to that which is oblique. This paper details two potential methods for a queer phenomenology - “performing” the animal and recognizing moments of everyday world-sharing - and explore the latter by providing a preliminary phenomenological description of the Texas field cricket.