Saving the wild, wilding the nation: the politics of species and spaces in Scottish conservation

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand discursive and material connections between wild nature and Scottish nationhood through an analysis of contemporary conservation. Drawing on theories of biopolitics, necropolitics and affect, I investigate four key case studies – the species conservation of pandas and wildcats, the culling of deer to protect native woodland, and the proposed reintroduction of the wolf – through readings of a wide range of media and literary texts. Focusing on the period before and after the 2014 independence referendum, I argue that wild nature is not simply constructed by or incorporated into Scottish nationalism, but is a site of contestation between different national identities and political positionalities, as well as a space of nonhuman agency where animal others are both active participants in and disruptors of conservation practices. I track conflicts, contradictions and tensions in conservation discourse and practice, excavating resonances and dissonances between the wild and the domestic, nature and the nation, the modern and the primitive, and examining the gendered, racialized, and class- based histories that inflect these dichotomies. In particular, I show how the Highlands as a space of (post)colonial “wildness” has been involved in competing nationalisms and claims for power, as well as conflicting ideas about what a healthy national nature should look like. I argue that the wild is mobilized in three different registers, often overlapping and intermingling: the wild as a modern project of progress, rationalism and independent nation-building; the wild as an expression of authentic heritage, purity, and continuity across time; and the wild as a disruptive, unpredictable, feral force for radical change.