ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a moment of institutional reflexivity connected to the Garden Terrorist banner, and suggest that this is an example of the tension between sensationalism and a desire to be seen as scientific and rational, a tension heightened by moments of true proximity to fundamentalism and fascist politics. The Garden Terrorist banner urging passers-by to Join the War Against Weeds can be set within a history of emotive claims about severity of the ecological damage being inflicted by invasive non-native species on New Zealand's native ecology, and increasing governmental interest in biosecurity. It argues that the use of the discourses of terror and anthropo-security undertakes the cultural work of reinforcing ecological borders, just as the mobilization of native nature as national citizenship identity dissolves internal borders and conflict in the attempted normalization of pro-biosecurity behaviour. The banner represents spatial and discursive closure where attention to biosecurity practices, policies and perception reveals more flexibility, complexity and openness.
