Saying Yes: Deborah Bird Rose’s “Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed”
Deborah Bird Rose was a leader in multidisciplinary ethnographic research through her work in Australian Aboriginal cultures. With care and open mind, she immersed herself in the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities of Yarralin and Lingarra to work on her Doctor of Philosophy and returned frequently to these communities throughout the span of her life. In her essay "Shimmer: When All You Love Is Being Trashed" (from the collection Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene ), Rose explores the rich, pulsating beauty available throughout all symbiotic nature and specifically, how it can be seen in the joyful relationship between the great family of flowering trees known as Angiosperms and the flying foxes that pollinate them. “Shimmer” refers to the radiance of interaction among what Rose calls the “matrix of power, desire, and lures” across the biosphere. The concept of shimmer was first taught to Rose by the Aboriginal people in the Vi...