Deadly Dingoes:'wild' Or Simply Requiring 'due Process'?

摘要

This paper elaborates a relational framework for 'political ecology', based on an analysis of a controversy over the aggressive behaviour of the dingoes on Fraser Island and brought to prominence by the death of a 9-year-old tourist in 2001. In contrast to the authorities' treatment of Fraser's environment as an essentially enduring entity, readily compliant with instrumental interventions, the 'partial perspectives' of their local critics emphasize co-constitutive relationships between people and non-humans, including dingoes. This latter view - that the form, character and content of human activities and the world are intimately interdependent - resonates with Latour's 'experimental metaphysics', which is intended to achieve the 'progressive composition' of people and their worlds. However, while Latour's framework relies on conventional notions of knowledge at odds with these local 'situated knowledges', Haraway illuminates how their experiential and affective qualities ensure the ethical character of 'progressive composition'. I call this consolidation of Latour and Haraway's ideas 'affirmative cosmopolitics', and briefly discuss its broader implications and resonance with Australian Aboriginal cosmology.