ABSTRACT
This chapter departs from and further engages with the central topics of the book, opening up discussions of what the findings could potentially mean in terms of multi-species futures, urban ecologies, humanimal ethics, and embracing heterogeneity. In a conversation with artist Katja Aglert, she and I zoom in on some of the problems raised in the book, our aim being to linger a little longer with the trouble. Aglert has been working with a similar complex of problems—constructions of vermin, boundaries of wild/domestic, nature/culture, native/invasive—yet in other contexts, and more importantly, from the perspective of contemporary art (2012). The idea behind collaborating with Aglert for this chapter—her coming from the inherently interdisciplinary field of contemporary art, and my working with problematizing and illuminating the in-between spaces of dialectical processes—is for the artist’s perspective to vitalize the academic discourse and show its flaws as well as strengths. Thus, our collaboration is clearly in line with the interdisciplinary trajectory of the book. Animals are, as pointed out, “undisciplined,” and the exploration of human/animal relations is a matter that transgresses disciplinary boundaries (Segerdahl 2011). Moreover, we wish to break with the genre of the traditional “conclusion” chapter, which often closes the arguments. Instead, we will provide a chapter that opens doors to new directions, points at potential new areas of use, and widens the scope of the initial questions. In line with this idea, the chapter is structured as a conversation. In reality, the conversations on which the chapter is based took place on several different occasions, both in the office, at cafes, and at home. The recorded conversations in total cover two and a half hours (much more unrecorded conversation went on, for sure) of transcribed data, edited by us both. The result is a joint exploration of the themes of the book, bringing them into “open endings.”
