Mark Halsey - Deleuze and Environmental Damage

DELEUZE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE

Advances in Criminology
Series Editor: David Nelken

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Alessandro De Giorgi

Globalization and Regulatory Character: Regulatory Reform after the Kader Toy Factory Fire
Fiona Haines

Family Violence and Police Response: Learning From Research, Policy and Practice in European Countres
Edited by Wilma Smeenk and Marijke Malsch

Crime and Culture: An Historical Perspective
Edited by Amy Gilman Srebnick and Ren Lvy

Power, Discourse and Resistance: A Genealogy of the Strangeways Prison Riot
Eamonn Carrabine

Hard Lessons: Reflections on Governance and Crime Control in Late Modernity
Edited by Richard Hil and Gordon Tait

Informal Criminal Justice
Edited by Dermot Feenan

Becoming Delinquent: British and European Youth, 1650-1950
Edited by Pamela Cox and Heather Shore

Migration, Culture Conflict and Crime
Edited by Joshua D.Freilich, Graeme Newman, S.Giora Shoham and Moshe Addad

Critique and Radical Discourses on Crime
George Pavlich

Contrasting Criminal Justice: Getting from Here to There
Edited by David Nelken

Violence of the Text

Mark Halsey
University of Melbourne, Australia and Flinders University of South Australia, Australia

First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright 2006 Mark Halsey

The Author hereby asserts his moral rights to be identified as the author of the Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Halsey, Mark
Deleuze and environmental damage. -(Advances in
criminology)
1.Deleuze, Gilles -Knowledge -Environmental law
2.Environmental law -Philosophy
I.Title
344'.046

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Halsey, Mark.
Deleuze and environmental damage: violence of the text /by Mark Halsey.
p.cm. --(Advances in criminology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7546-2491-9
1. Offenses against the environment. 2. Environmental degradation. 3. Ecology -
Philosophy. 4. Human ecology. 5. Criminology. 6. Deleuze, Gilles. I. Title. II.
Series.

HV6401.H35 2005
364.1'8--dc22

2005028883

ISBN 9780754624912 (hbk)

An author writes not from the standpoint of a solitary individual, but from the perspective of a force marked by countless events. In the writing of this book, the following events have mattered to me: visiting the forests of the Errinundra Plateau in South Eastern Australia; learning of the plight of the Powerful Owl, the Spot Tailed Quoll, and the ecosystems they rely upon; and knowing something of the damage likely to occur whenever forests are mapped according to their prescribed functions as opposed to their unknown qualities. Kate Dorsey, John Fitzgerald, Benjamin Pederick, Michael Garrod, Adam Biggs, Simon Holmes, and Mark Rosenthal all, in their singular ways, influenced the writing of this story. Sincere thanks to Ms Antonia Quadara for her assistance in preparing the manuscript.

Publication of this work was assisted by a publication grant from the University of Melbourne.

Versions of have appeared, respectively, as:

Early in 2001 I visited an exhibition at the South Australian Museum devoted to the extinct thylacine also known as the 'Tasmanian Tiger'. One display in particular caught my eye a text from 1886 which ran as follows,

It is quite time some other name was commonly adopted for the comparatively harmless marsupial, generally spoken of as 'The Tiger'. It is not the tenacious brute the name implies, and under no circumstances would it attack ever a child. On two occasions I have met with recently arrived emigrants who objected to leave town to secure work in the country for fear they or their children might be devoured ( The Tasmanian Mail , September 1886).

I cite this text because it is a clear example of how words can significantly alter the course of events. Indeed, writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault contend that words are themselves events since they are the acoustical outcome of (violent) struggles, impositions, and forgettings (see Nietzsche, 1992; Foucault. 1980a, pp. 139-64). No one knows precisely how many 'tigers' there were prior to Europeans arriving in 1788 in 'Australia'. What is known is that these animals once roamed not just the island of Tasmania but across the mainland of Australia and probably numbered somewhere in the low tens of thousands. Due predominantly to their perceived threat to people and livestock, successive governments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries issued bounties to anyone who could produce a dead tiger. By 1900, around 2000 such bounties had been paid in Tasmania alone. The tiger is believed to have been driven into extinction on the mainland around 3000 years ago. On July 10, 1936, the Tasmanian Government passed legislation to protect 'its' Tasmanian Tigers. However, less than two months later, the last known tiger died in captivity at the Hobart Zoo.

At this point, it is important to ask: What's in a name? In the above example, it would seem necessary to say that the name 'tiger' brought with it nothing less than the urge toward the decimation of a species. And it did so largely because the term 'tiger' took the form of an overcoded signifier a word capable of projecting (however erroneously) a very particular series of imaginings based around such terms as 'ferocity', 'danger', and 'unpredictability'. In some cultures, though, such as parts of India and Siberia, the tiger signified (and continues to signify) everything majestic and noble. This, of course, was not the case in Australia where it was ascribed demonic characteristics (savage, cunning, ruthless). Ironically, the scientific name given the Tasmanian 'Tiger' was Didelphis cynocephalus , which means, literally, 'marsupial with a dog-like head'. Being a marsupial, this 'tiger' had a pouch and suckled its young. Although portrayed in folklore and newspapers as preying 'mercilessly' on sheep and other livestock, it is now believed to have spent most of its time eating other small marsupials and birds and even insects when food was particularly scarce. But even this is conjecture since, due to its 'early' extinction, scant little is known about the social habits and life cycle(s) of the thylacine. In short, the capacity to inquire and become acquainted with this animal's various flows (of movement), speeds (of maturation) and intensities (of play, hunting, aggression), was irrevocably interrupted by the will to locate and destroy it. This is not to say that the fate of the thylacine would have been better if it had been spoken of as a kind of dog or a marsupial rather than as a member of the giant cat family. But it is to contend that its fate would have been different perhaps even preferable to the present state of affairs.