＂That Tree E Listen To You＂: Bill Neidjie's Story About Feeling as Literary Ethnobotany

This essay theorizes the concept of literary ethnobotany through a phytocritical, or plant-focused, reading of the work of Kakadu Elder ＂Big＂ Bill Neidjie. As a genre, on the one hand, literary ethnobotany comprises poetry, prose, scripts, verse-narratives, and other creative writing forms that engage cultural knowledge of plants as food, medicines, fibres, materials, ornaments, decorations, totems, teachers, agents, and personae. As a critical reading optic, on the other hand, literary ethnobotany illuminates the cultural-botanical dimensions of a text, such as Neidjie's Story About Feeling, published in 1989. Transcribed by ethnographer Keith Taylor, Neidjie's verse-narrative comprises eleven thematic chapters on, inter alia, the traditional botanical knowledge of the Gaagudju people whose ancestral country encompasses World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. Story About Feeling represents the potentialities of Aboriginal Australian poetry as a medium for preserving traditional botanical knowledge increasingly under threat in neocolonial Australia. More specifically, Neidjie's work hinges on the possibility of human-plant communication-that plant life announces itself, through a variety of means, to kin but also to members of other species, including animals and humans. For instance, the chapter ＂Tree＂ from Story About Feeling discloses a complex view of plants as responsive and expressive agents within Gaagudju cosmology, or Dreaming. Respect for-and dialogue with-the botanical world is integral to Neidjie's poetics of place. My application of a literary-ethnobotanical lens to Neidjie's verse-narrative elucidates the role of intercorporeality, affect, and voice in mediating human-plant communication. Once regarded as esotericism, the idea of plant communication has gained scientific traction of late as essential to the fitness of ecological communities. In an integrative and inclusive manner, literary botany facilitates a rapprochement between Indigenous, poetic, and scientific epistemologies of plants.

關鍵字

Aboriginal Australian poetry ； Bill Neidjie ； Gaagudju ； literary ethnobotany ； phytocriticism ； vegetal affect ； human-tree communication

並列摘要

本文藉由閱讀澳洲北領地原住民“大”比爾．納迪傑長老的詩歌中有關植物描寫或植物批評，來建構文學民族植物學的概念。作為文類，文學民族植物學包括詩，散文，劇本，敘事詩，以及其它創作探討植物作為食物，醫藥，布料，物品，裝飾，佈置，圖騰，老師，代理人或各種人物的文化知識。另一方面，作為批評閱讀視角，文學民族植物學則闡明納迪傑於1989年出版的《感情的故事》書中文化與植物混雜的特色。透過民族學家基思．泰勒的抄錄翻譯，納迪傑敘述詩篇包含十一個主題，其中更含蓋加古朱土著傳統的植物知識，這個原住民的祖先世居目前澳洲北領地被列為世界文化與自然遺產的澳洲最大國家公園—卡卡杜國家公園。

並列關鍵字

澳洲原住民詩歌；比爾．納迪傑；文學民族植物學；植物批評；植物情動；人與樹的溝通

參考文獻

Gagliano, Monica. “Green Symphonies: A Call for Studies on Acoustic Communication in Plants.” Behavioral Ecology, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2013, pp. 789-96, doi:10.1093/beheco/ars206

Hannah, Lee, et al. “30% Land Conservation and Climate Action Reduces Tropical Extinction Risk by More Than 50%.” Ecography, Vol. 43, 2020, pp. 1-11, doi:10.1111/ecog.05166

Keogh, Luke. “Duboisia Pituri: A Natural History.” Historical Records of Australian Science, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2011, pp. 199-214. doi:10.1071/HR11008

Khait, I. et al. “Sound Perception in Plants.” Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology, Vol. 92, 2019, pp. 134-8, doi:10.1016/j.semcdb.2019.03.006

Leonard, Anne S. and Jacob S. Francis. “Plant-Animal Communication: Past, Present and Future.” Evolutionary Ecology, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2017, pp. 143-51, doi:10.1007/s10682-017-9884-5

國際替代計量

＂That Tree E Listen To You＂: Bill Neidjie's Story About Feeling as Literary Ethnobotany

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