| Description |
The management of iconic predatory species such as the gray wolf provides a valuable index of human-nature relations. The wolf is incorporated into discursive constructions of political power in unique ways, and it may function as an ideograph, or an ideological discursive tool. As both a symbolic mobilizer of human sympathies/ antipathies and an influential material presence within ecosystems, the wolf is worthy of study for how its characterization in discourse resonates rhetorically and materially. This study uses discourse analytic tools to examine tensions in the rhetorical discourse of management decisions related to the gray wolf's reintroduction in the United States. The study focuses on the reintroduction and recovery of the gray wolf in the American West and considers broader themes related to the separation between humans and nature, wildlife management, and the ways in which human and nonhuman bodies alike are disciplined by the discourse of political borders. Engaging the concepts of territoriality, power, ideology and human-nature hybridity while working from specific findings regarding wolf characterization, this study explores how the wolf's presence is both enabled and constrained rhetorically by human political discourse regimes that may fragment the species as an ecological presence in bioregions by imposing on it a rhetoric of political borders. |
