For the birds : autoethnographic entangelements

Politically, critically, materially, ethically, and creatively, I wonder how to think through voice with a fresh ear. Despite beginning with my attempt to disentangle an avian cacophony, I stake a claim in this chapter for particularity, for the singularity of voice. The mode of writing that I have adopted starts with a body in place, senses alert to the things of the world as they unfold in that place, at that moment, and how these loop and swirl out to things elsewhere and otherwise. I want to write autoethnography that produces entanglements, relationalities, and interdependence" not only with others like myself but also with animals and non-human elements of everyday life (Gannon 2016, 2017a, 2017b). This is autoethnography in which writing is attuned to affective and material modalities, in which fragments jostle alongside each other in a disjointed temporality, in which alterity and incommensurability are foregrounded, and in which the textures and rhythms of language are always apparent (Gannon 2017c). In autoethnography, I have argued that 'each text must find its own form, its own voice, its own structure' (Gannon 2017d, n.p.). This chapter proceeds through autoethnographic and theoretical movements, beginning with birds at dawn and ending with birds at dusk. It considers multispecies encounters, autoethnographic voice, and birdsong. It concludes with vignettes of memory, autoethnographic fragments, and little scenes of everyday life with birds.