re: Strange request... my thanks and detailed response

[William Hipwell]

Dear Colleagues:
 
First of all, though I hope to get back to some of you individually, I want to thank everyone for the overwhelming response to my little query.  It has been a very helpful and at times really entertaining discussion.  Sorry to tease, but on reading Adil's first posting I must confess I felt a great sense of relief when I got far enough through his message to realize that no, there have not actually been any Tiger/Human conflicts in Indiana!  And I chuckled out loud when I learned from Marcus that in Berlin, “bores remain almost unchallenged and procreate at will”!  An intolerable situation, certainly!  However, as much as I love dogs, it was the image of an unruly gang of irate kangaroos drowning someone's poor pooch that really made the tears of mirth start to flow.
 
Joking aside, for everyone's information, the paper I am thinking about will, from a Deleuzian perspective, focus on "attempts" by non-humans to reclaim physical territory of which they have been deprived.  I cannot really say more right now, since your responses have set my mind off in some exciting and unanticipated directions.
 
Now, a few words of clarification and summary of the interesting points many of you have raised, along with my own contribution to the debate(s) my query has catalysed on the list.
 
It was very, very sloppy of me to use the word “nature” the way I did.  I used it in its colloquial sense to mean “that part of the biosphere that has not been brought completely under control of, or destroyed by, Industria (industrial civilization)”.  I should have said “non-human animals (or life-forms) strike back”, not “nature strikes back”, and in any case used the _expression_ with my tongue firmly in cheek and the Star Wars theme playing in my head.  Non-human animals as “freedom fighters”?  Only in my and Gary Larson's dreams…
 
Actually, this is the first time in my life that anyone has levelled the “anthropocentric” epithet at me.  I am, if anything, an ecocentrist, and yes, I believe that humans have the potential (and the historical precedents) to play functional, contributory roles in the ecosystems that sustain them.  There is also little doubt that inequitable power relationships have strongly contributed to undermining the possibility of such a harmonious relationship, especially in the margins.
 
Honestly, though, to say, as Adil does, that “Few species are as marginalized as the poor of the world” is really quite astonishingly unsupportable.  There is, I think you will all readily agree, no greater marginalization than extinction.  There are now 6.3 billion of us and, say, a few hundred surviving Siberian Tigers (to take a “large, fluffy” example), and it certainly does not do the tigers or any of the other thousands of endangered or red-listed species any good to conflate them with humanity.  They are different from industrial humans, and are undoubtedly severely threatened by Industria (or by rural peasants for that matter).  No, we are most of us not environmental philosophers, though given our collective area of interest and the “Ph.” trailing after many of our names, perhaps we should be.  What I think we can agree on is this.  Empathy (and the “survival instinct”) requires us to admit that no animal “wants” its species to be diminished in total population.  That is, no animal would want its species to be brought closer to extinction.  Whether non-humans are considered large, fluffy, sexy, or whatever, it is a matter of simple equity and humility (and perhaps, for the anthropocentrists, ultimately self-preservation) that humans not further decrease the diversity and abundance of non-human nature.
 
As far as “our” and “their” territory go, numerous examples show us that human beings and other animals are not necessarily territorially exclusive.  However, sometimes they are, because (and I'm with Rafael on this) often humans are often simply too greedy or selfish or ignorant to share (as Susi so aptly suggests, the phrases we most commonly use to disguise this inability to share are “problem animals” and “animal problems”).  Certain non-human beings simply cannot tolerate (survive) a certain level or type of human activity (I am thinking of industrial (de)forestry, agricultural or (sub)urban development/sprawl as these things are now practised).  Human activity can sometimes drive non-humans out of their (everyone’s) territory.  As the places to which non-humans can go to escape human interference diminish, so do the aggregate populations of certain non-human species.  Alternately, human-animal conflicts arise and, for example, cougars begin to snack on urban joggers (never, ever wear a Walkman when walking alone in the forest!).  This is, to contradict Cronon, the importance of “wilderness”.
 
I am all for approaches to protecting non-humans from the depredations of Industria, or capitalism, or what have you, in ways that do not “kick in the gut” the marginalized or dispossessed of the world.  However, I think that the hostility toward “environmentalists and conservationists” that so often surfaces in this debate is misplaced and less than productive.  It is increasingly clear that there is a “common enemy” of both human communities and non-human nature (perhaps, as Pogo famously said, that enemy is “us”).  Let’s try to focus on co-operating in empowering a resistance without getting into the petty backbiting and squabbles over terminology that must so delight industrial-capitalist Power.
 
I'll leave it at that, and will read with grateful interest any responses to the perspectives I have shared.
 
Cheers, 
 
Bill