Nonhuman Complexity Poetics: Leaf-Cutter Ants and Multispecies Composition

In this article I examine leaf-cutter ants, and particularly their nest architecture, in terms of what I call an ‘ethological poetics.’ I propose that thinking about leaf-cutter architecture is an engagement with a radically alternative aesthetics. I begin by contrasting human and insect ontologies, before focusing on ants. I then outline characteristics of leaf-cutter societies. Having established a broad, ontological basis for their production, I conclude by analysing leaf-cutter nest architecture. Leaf-cutter architecture is based not on predetermined plans, but on a transcorporeal poetics of immanence, or a multispecies process of making that is entangled with the living conditions of an environmental field.