ABSTRACT
The concepts of “gender”, “nature” and “nonhuman animals” form part of the discourses, and what they have in common is that they make reference, each in their own specific way, to questions of difference. This chapter focuses on concepts that attest to a proliferation of difference. It shows how nature relations can be analysed through a film and media studies lens informed by gender and cultural animal studies. The chapter discusses Donna Haraway’s “figures” and Jacques Derrida’s “animots”, two key concepts in feminist discourse and cultural animal studies respectively, and considers how they can be connected to studies of the proliferation of difference in arts and media. It presents a case study of Pascale Ferran’s film Bird People, in which questions of anthropological difference figure prominently, alongside questions of gender and class difference. The chapter then proposes a perspective shift on nature relations that opens up an alternative reading of the film.
