Venue: Sydney

Date: 30 November–2 December 2021

What does it mean for an animal to come from abroad? How do contesting values of hospitality and hostility intersect when a pigeon, as an intimate guest or an uninvited visitor, lands in a foreign land? In this talk, I take the case of foreign pigeons, who are sometimes captured as spies at the India-Pakistan border and other times invited as guests to take part in million rupees pigeon race in Pakistan, to examine the birds’ contested status as potential security threats and cherished guests. By critically countering Derrida’s pairing of hospitality with hostility, I ask how the Punjabi phrase gee aya nu (welcome, or yes to all arrivals), as a waning idea, continues to structure ethics of belonging, mobility, and affective hosting of more-than-human Others.