Do Humans Dream of Disappearing Insects?: Fictional Strategies to Convey the Impact of Insect Loss

Abstract

This chapter explores the use of fictional representations to convey urgency about the impact of disappearing insect populations. Philip K. Dick’s iconic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? offers a powerful case that empathy is an essential attribute of humanity. However, it is difficult for most of us to experience the same empathy for insects that we feel for other animals. Insects are perceived as invasive, carriers of disease, and destructive of property; they are less “cute” and companionable. What fictional strategies can be employed to engage a public who, in Donna Haraway’s phrase, are “dithering” over the loss of insects? Strategies would include stories where humans experience the pain of loss of insects, not only emotional loss but deprivation of plant sources needed to feed animals and ultimately human populations.

This chapter considers fiction which may elicit empathy and lead to sympathetic identification with, for example, bees and butterflies. I discuss Maja Lunde’s The History of Bees, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Donna Haraway’s “Camille Stories,” and Barbara Litwick’s “Monarch Blue.” In these stories protagonists experience varying types of inter-species bonding with bees and butterflies—emotional identification, role reversal, and even adoption of physical attributes. These are stories where the lines between humans and insects blur.

However, even if readers resist emotional connection, I argue for the application of certain principles adapted from Care Ethics philosophy to insect populations.

There is an ongoing debate about our moral obligation to insects; because they do not exhibit sentience as we know it, their capacity to feel pain is in question. I argue that even if we doubt the ability of insects to feel pain, care ethics principles are relevant to decision-making given our own interest in preserving pollinators. While the moral philosophy of care ethics originally focused on caregiving to family members and close familiars, two recent extensions are relevant to preserving insect populations: extension to animal ethics and extension of care ethics principles to public policy, even on a national or global scale. Animal care ethicists have emphasized our obligation to vertebrate animals rather than insects. I offer a rationale for extending care practice to insects as a matter of praxis, regardless of whether we recognize a duty.