Lily Scherlis

Beasts of no nation

On the poetics of invasion and Marwa Helal

Image adapted from cover of ‘Invasive Species.’

When they adopted the term “invasive species,” midcentury ecologists imposed a lexicon of human violence onto the migration of organisms, suffusing natural phenomena with political flavor. Invasion is a versatile metaphor for all kinds of unwanted arrivals and threats to national borders; the term supercharges crusades against overly dominant flora and fauna with xenophobic emotion.

               who made this taxonomy?
unmake it
Marwa Helal, Invasive Species[1]

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