Parrots and Starlings

This chapter introduces the sense in which “mocking birds” applies to a range of birds that mimic and introduces the different kinds of “technologies” (avian, human, interspecies, poetic, mechanic, etc.) variously addressed by the volume’s contributors. Taking the pairing of parrot and starling as paradigmatic across a range of different philological traditions, the introduction surveys some of the foundational theoretical and methodological problems for the human sciences presented by the topic of bird mimicry. The parrot, global sign of a long history of human-animal mimicry, appears everywhere across different linguistic and literary traditions, a familiar and exotic trope that is something of a touchstone for postcolonial studies. The starling adds to that familiar and exotic trope a complication of classification, cultural difference, and bio-diversity (including all the various mynah birds also called starlings). The foundational problems of bird and word classification posed by parrot and starling extend to the range of scientific, poetic, linguistic, and post-human issues discussed by the volume as a whole, whether addressing this bird, that bird, or even no bird at all.