ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 is the first of two chapters drawing on multispecies ethnographies with ex-farmed laying hens that took place over the course of two years. In this chapter, six rehomed chickens, are introduced, as well as the multispecies space of the chicken coop, and the chicken-human relationship. This chapter contends that chickens as living, being, becoming agents of their own lives are far removed from a human understanding of how to be in the world, how to produce, and dwell in the worlds created by and for humans. The notion of possibility and futurity are introduced in this chapter, to consider how some futures are already exiled to the absolute elsewhere at the scales of individual, collective, and worldly, but this absolute elsewhere (or, the unimaginable) is not necessarily a universal metaphysical or moral frame of reference. This chapter thus recounts an attempt at an alternative world, informed by vegan ethico-political beliefs and knowledges. Different to a sanctuary, but offering safety nonetheless, this attempt to rethink interspecies cohabitation. As such, this chapter proposes that interspecies friendship might be a fruitful imagination of multispecies worlds after veganism.
