A State of War or Peace?
Contents
On the Proliferation of "Rats"
By Catherine Mougenot, Marc MormontEnglish
This paper examines conflicts that arose in France concerning use of poison to control proliferation of voles, coypus and muskrats. It borrows the concept of “agencement” from philosopher Gilles Deleuze to describe these conflicts as interactive and shifting problem definitions and as ways of redistributing everyone’s place – humans and animals – in landscapes and through disputable techniques. These “agencements” are moments of several intertwined stories, some of them being conflictual, some others being new arrangements that can be seen as coexistence. States of peace are negotiated but they are always fragile and prone to new resistances or failures.
Keywords
- conflict
- arrangement
- proliferation
- pests
- rat