Reply To: September 8th: History, Conservation and politics, the example of Australia

Reply to Morag by Nisa

Ha Morag I will begin where you ended: with the hope that later on in life everything will be illuminated. I share your hopes but from what I’ve learned for now is that we the postmodern people are doomed to chase illumination and at the same time negate that there is illumination. Well, it is what it is. I for one, would welcome a bit of enlightenment credo in academia, if nothing else, I believe the rate of disillusioned cynical people would plummet 😀 … But to get back on track. It seems the discussion with Libby has helped us all in some way with our thesis work; finally! You have a very interesting topic for a thesis! And you are completely right, The Wolf is not just an animal, it’s one of the most powerful archetypes and symbols in all Western cultures. I love wolves of course (I’ll tell you a secret: it’s actually my spirit animal, so there you have it, confirmed, wolves mean a lot to many people) and symbols get filled with all kinds of meanings. And the wolf hunt issue in Sweden often masquerades as you well know, underlying national tensions. Which brings us to the question of nation as a scale; as historians we are aware how important history is for legitimizing nations and ethnogenesis; whose history do we environmental historians write? We can make cozy detours and claim that we are analyzing governance and governments not nation-states and nature as an agent but at some point we will clash with the nation as a scale, probably without even knowing it. And that’s the tricky part. Ok but don’t worry, we will manage since the future is bright and our theses will be great.