The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect
by Yalda Khodadad
Butterfly metamorphosis has long represented the potential for profound growth and change. The term “imago” refers to cells residing in larvae of insects that later contribute to the formation of the “imago” or adult insect. Metamorphosis can be complete or incomplete. Holometabolism or complete metamorphosis, exclusive to beetles, butterflies and moths, flies, and wasps, is a four-stage process: the egg, larva, pupa, and adult stages. What differentiates holometabolism from its counterpart hemimetabolism, or incomplete change, is that holometabolous insects experience a total change in their form throughout their life course. The imago cells, condensed into “imaginal discs,” multiply as the larva matures into an adult. Much like our own stem cells, imago cells go on to specialize in the construction of various external structures.
There is something thrilling about a thorough restructuring of the self, a rebirth that becomes completely self-sufficient. The word “imago,” derived from the Latin word for image, likeness, or copy, signals that “such an insect, having passed through its larval stages, and having, as it were, cast off its mask or disguise, has become a true representation or image of its species.” Further investigation reveals that the term was also used to refer to the waxen ancestral portraits often on display in the homes of Roman noble people, not for “immortalizing the features of the dead for the benefit of posterity, but in the ancient beliefs connected with burial and with the life of the dead.”
The butterfly has appeared in countless cultural, religious, and spiritual interpretations across time. Ancient Egyptians saw the butterfly as a guide to the afterlife for recently deceased spirits. In ancient Mexico, the butterfly symbolized fire and warfare; it was also believed to be a reincarnation of dead warriors. Various Japanese legends associate butterflies with people’s living, dying, or dead souls. Ancient Greeks and Romans considered butterflies symbols for the soul; the Greek word for butterfly was “psyche,” which means soul or mind. Many interesting interpretations of Lepidoptera (the order of insects that includes butterflies and moths) also emanate from sub-Saharan Africa where, depending on the region, encounters with a butterfly or moth are believed to foreshadow rain or the arrival of important visitors and even the death, illness, or protection of children. In Sudan and Rwanda, referring to a person as a butterfly or moth identifies them as a “nasty quarreling person” who “in the end will burn him/herself.”
Many artists working in different mediums have drawn inspiration from symbolism associated with the butterfly. One performance art group called Imago Cells is made up of Denny Fiorino (Kdindie) and Luisa De Santi who have described their work as “performing textiles on the emergence of imaginal cells.” Fiorino and De Santi focus on the “microcosm of mitosis or cellular division to trigger new interspecies symbiosis and immerse the audience in unimagined macro ecosystems.” Videos on Facebook and Instagram show dancers swathed in brilliantly patterned crochet and large plastic “cells” in which they perform. The artists contort themselves into playful, unfamiliar shapes. The medium combined with the method is nothing if not imaginative.
Another artistic rendering of the metamorphic process is seen in the work of electronic music producer Daniel Lopatin. Lopatin, who performs under the name Oneohtrix Point Never (OPN), crafted the track “Imago,” which begins with the looping phrase “Listen (imagine if).” This line, the only lyric in the nearly four-minute song, lends an almost sanguine tone to an otherwise unsettling set of electronic noises. “What is so moving about these radically abstracted pieces,” writes Philip Sherburne in a Pitchfork review, “is their instability and their impermanence; they are always in the process of becoming or disintegrating, and the listener accustomed to OPN’s way of working soon comes to understand that no moment of beauty will last for long; that even the most gorgeous passage will soon crumble to noise—or, worse, become something tacky and distasteful.” The flux between becoming and disintegrating, and between beauty and decay, mirrors the life cycle of our lepidopteran creatures of interest.
Humans have long been intrigued by the metamorphology of butterflies, which encompasses growth, decline, and impermanence. The life cycle of the butterfly offers an adaptable narrative of change as a positive, inspirational occurrence. Energy enables the fermenting mass of cells that churn within the chrysalis to erupt into its final form. Harnessing the power found in turning radically inward, the caterpillar becomes the embodiment, the image, of what this creature should be: the imago.
This pattern of development through constrained, creative remaking suggests a counterpoint to the ever-expanding, consumptive nature of dominant Western notions of economic development. Unlimited, extractivist growth relies on the depletion of non-renewable inputs to produce non-reusable and non-recyclable outputs. This system is uncharacteristic of the natural world.
“Wendigo Economics” is a term that captures this dominant Western mode of limitless growth and development. Coined by Ojibwe environmentalist and activist Winona LaDuke, the concept draws on the Indigenous (specifically Cree) character of the Wiindigo. The Wiindigo/Wendigo is described by the late Jack D. Forbes, an indigenous Native American studies scholar, as “an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts, including cannibalism.” Forbes concludes that imperialism and exploitation bear the marks of Wendigo cannibalism. “The wealthy and exploitative literally consume the lives of those that they exploit,” he writes, which is a form of cannibalism “accompanied by no spiritually meaningful ceremony or ritual.” LaDuke similarly describes Wendigo Economics as a system that “destroys the source of its wealth, Mother Earth.” Thus the Wendigo interrupts the natural cycle of growth and decay that is represented by the butterfly, and appropriates it for exponential growth.
Surfridge, once a wealthy oceanside town in Los Angeles County, is a clear stage upon which these systems have played out. The upscale haven for the wealthy residents of Los Angeles grew from the 1920s until the 70s, until the planned expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport led to the City of Los Angeles acquiring the land and driving out the residents. However, further development for the airport was halted when the endangered butterfly was found flitting between the soon-to-be bulldozed buildings. The El Segundo blue butterfly narrowly escaped the maw of the rapacious Wendigo when, in 1976, it was granted federally protected status by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Since then, the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo has used the butterfly as its mascot. By aligning itself with organisms that symbolize cyclical renewal, the oil industry aims to project an image of reciprocity rather than extractivism.
Yet the life cycle of Surfridge itself speaks to the dynamic of home and dispossession—of ownership and invasion—that so often unfolds in the shadow of the Wendigo. The land where the town of Surfridge would come to exist was the original home of a native butterfly; this land was subsequently developed for luxurious human habitation and then threatened by airport expansion and ultimately returned, in diminished form, to the butterfly that had flourished there decades earlier.
The ghost of thwarted industry lingers amid the errant lampposts and concrete blocks that are the vestiges of a once vibrant neighborhood. The eerie scene brings to mind a phrase offered by Tlingit scholar Anne Spice and referenced by LaDuke and Cowen: “invasive infrastructure.” The term refers to that which is “not native to an environment,” rapidly disseminating after its arrival “and caus[ing] harm.” Spice argues that “the characterization of oil and gas pipelines as ‘critical infrastructures’ constitutes a form of settler colonial invasion” because it prompts the question: critical for whom?
There is much to be learned from the hyperlocal El Segundo blue, its intimate ties with the neighboring expansive, extractive oil economy, and the unbounded nature of modern air travel. “Infrastructure is the how of settler colonialism,” LaDuke and Cowan write, “and the settler colony is where the Wiindigo runs free.” Yet they remind us that there is nothing inherently colonial about infrastructure: “It is also essential for transformation; a pipe can carry fresh water as well as toxic sludge.” Imaginal cells, lying dormant within the caterpillar, likewise carry the potential for a different future within the present—waiting to be realized. The complete metamorphosis that butterflies and Lepidoptera undergo suggests a model for the type of autonomous infrastructure that allows a shift from exploitative and extractive systems to ones that are more intentional and regenerative.
Models taken from natural and biological processes must be applied to humans with caution lest they become oppressive. Theories such as social Darwinism or the “selfish gene” interpret nature in ways that ultimately constrain our future potential by stripping nuance, agency, and creativity from human behavior. Though nature’s reservoir of themes is vast, a too-literal interpretation of even seemingly innocuous concepts like metamorphosis could lead to harmful outcomes when invoked to justify controversial aspects of concepts such as transhumanism, societal metamorphosis, or that of transformative cults. The metamorphology of creatures capable of rebirth nevertheless shows us a clever system that allows for experimentation, despite ever-present developmental constraints. This model presents a hopeful challenge to the conditions of mindless expansion under which extractive development occurs in much of the modern and contemporary world—an insight that may ultimately lead us to envision alternatives to Wendigo infrastructure.
Corporations like Chevron co-opt the El Segundo blue butterfly’s iconography to further the goals of the fossil fuel industry and unconstrained economic growth. However, the rich, nuanced symbolism of the butterfly stands in tension with corporate propaganda. Returning to the cells residing within the pre-metamorphic caterpillar, one can easily grasp the biological poetry underlying the term “imago.” Imagination enables representation “without aiming at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are.” The function of imago cells in butterfly metamorphology can inspire a different future for all, as radical change begins with daring to imagine something beyond what is given.
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