The Future is Multispecies: New Perspectives on the Lives of Devotional Creatures

Our forthcoming anthology, Devotional Creatures: Bugs in Chinese Religions, investigates the roles played by insects and amphibians in the development of Chinese religions from an animal-centric anthropomorphic perspective, to imagine the “small agencies” at the intersection of animal-human lifeworlds. Devotional Creatures presents chapters on frogs, silkworms, ants, centipedes, locusts, and hornets in a wide variety of Chinese religious and historical contexts, from medieval Buddhist monastic regulations, Daoist rituals, and late imperial morality tracts to contemporary popular deity icons. It is our contention that little creatures helped shape ethical codes, omenology, and merit-making. Silkworms, hornets, and centipedes co-created Daoist-inspired popular rituals to control baleful forces. Flies and mosquitoes instigated advances in Buddhist monastery regulations and hygiene. More-than-human religious studies has prompted serious investigation of the impact of nonhuman animals on human religions. Our anthology, too, presses up against the boundaries of this idea to discover its generative force and investigative limits.