Salisbury Memorial Lecture with Anna Tsing
Fish that Empty the Water: Co-Species Invasion as Occupation
The concept of “co-species invasion” points to the role of non-human species in colonial, neocolonial, and settler occupation. Thinking with Manitoba Metis scholar Zoe Todd’s “Critical Indigenous Fish Philosophy,” this talk shows how introduced fish remake landscapes for settler projects. In the city of Sorong, in Indonesian Papua, new infrastructure has destroyed the local hydrology, replacing it with deoxygenated, sediment-filled drains, sinks, and canals. Introduced fish flourish in such waters while also themselves enacting an almost complete replacement of native freshwater fauna. In promoting invasive species as “food security,” the government justifies the infrastructure-driven destruction of the Indigenous landscape and its replacement with a settler property regime. This talk, based on research performed together with Hatib Kadir, tells the story through fish. The talk also continues experiments with a more-than-human anthropology with nonhuman protagonists.
Anna Tsing is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and also at Aarhus University in Denmark. Since 2019, she has co-directed UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast). She is the author or co-author of many books, including, most recently, Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature.
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A reception in the Redpath Museum will follow the talk.