Beetles and Vessels

This article studies a poetry collection written in Mè'phàà by Hubert Matiúwàa. I propose that the collection, Xùkú Xùwàá/Entre escarabajos (Among Beetles), exemplifies radical personhood that redefines the relationship between humans and nonhumans, having beetles and their anatomies as common denominators for all earthlings. The poems become relevant to ecological thought and animal studies because the entanglement of insects, plants, and animals that intertwine people’s sense of agency, eroticism, and sexuality proposes an alternative biocultural taxonomy and establishes non-Western philosophy as contributor to contemporary ecological thinking. In other words: Matiúwàa’s poems allow readers to notice that there might be another system of thought, one that includes humans and nonhumans without disregarding their/our differences.