Kananlento vapauteen

Lajinormeja vastustavat broilerit ja häkkikanat Seita Parkkolan ja Niina Revon romaanissa Lupaus ja Matti Nikkolan runossa ”Avaan häkit”

Authors

• Helinä Ääri University of Turku

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23980/sqs.66352

Abstract

This article discusses freeing chickens and chickens trying to free themselves from an animal industrial complex. I examine two Finnish literary texts of chickens getting out of industrial henhouses: a young adult novel Lupaus (The Promise, 2007) by Seita Parkkola and Niina Repo, and Matti Nikkola’s poem “Avaan häkit” (“I Open the Cages”) from his collection Lehmän uni (A Cow’s Dream, 1991). In Lupaus the chickens who are getting free are broiler chickens and in “Avaan häkit” they are battery hens. I analyse both texts focusing on the chicken characters. I ask how Lupaus and “Avaan häkit” represent the characters becoming free in relation to the liberator characters. When chickens are freed in these two texts, who actually becomes free? How do the texts depict chickens’ resistance in poultry industry? The most important theoretical background for the article is queer studies done within critical animal studies. In critical animal studies queer has often been applied to questioning species norms and opposing speciesism. In addition to queer studies I use some methods of ecocriticism, animal ethics and ecofeminism.