Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

'1080' poison is central to the work of conservation in Aotearoa. A materialist analysis of the toxin points to the need to understand toxicities beyond frameworks of harm and exposure, to attend to how toxic effects are produced through situated practice and mediated by more-than-human actions.

Paper long abstract

In Aotearoa New Zealand conservation often means killing. Central to the lethal labour of pest control here is a ‘vertebrate toxic agent’ (a poison) known as 1080. The poison is lethal to almost every kind of mammal, though its blunt metabolic effects materialise differently in different species bodies. Drawing on a three-year research project into this toxin, this talk will explore the molecular workings of 1080 as it enters bodies and environments, is microbially dissembled and, often, swiftly dissolved. A close materialist analysis of the toxin reveals the futility of easy denunciation, and at the same time the fantasy of scientific certainty. It points to the need to understand toxicities beyond frameworks of harm and exposure, to attend to how toxic effects are produced through situated practice and mediated by more-than-human actions. Here, the lethal and the ephemeral go hand in hand, surfacing the need to think with temporalised materialities and the conditions under which they change.