The making of a (wild) fish
| dc.contributor.author | Brown, Duncan | |
| dc.contributor.author | Thom, Craig | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-10-27T10:03:12Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-10-27T10:03:12Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.description.abstract | In this article, which draws on experiences of having observed Martin Davies’s trout egg and milt collection at Thrift Dam in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, interviews with Davies himself, theoretical literature on fish breeding, genealogy, animal history, science studies, legislation on genetic manipulation, literature on notions of wildness and domestication, and actually fly-fishing at venues stocked with Davies’s fish, the article’s authors consider the possibilities and paradoxes involved in the historical-biological “making” of a fish: a fish in process for more than thirty years, described by its(co)maker as “totally wild.” The article explores the question: Can one make a “wild” fish? The question is not entirely new, as there are extensive debates in animal and environmental studies about wildness. The process of answering that question leads the article’s authors to the core of Anthropocenic debates about interspecies relationships, distinctions between the domesticated and the wild, the biology and ethics of genetic manipulation, and even the limits of the human. These issues have been well explored by many scholars, but this article’s authors engage with them from the specificities of fish and their bodies, which, with the fluidity of their environment and their inherent, elusive slipperiness, frequently evade conceptual or physical capture. In particular, the case that the article’s authors consider raises challenging questions about human and nonhuman agency: Can a body of water and its multiple constituents be actors? Can fish which cannot breed “naturally” be agents in their own remaking? Can one make a fish for and with a specific environment? Are “natural” and “human” selections necessarily irreconcilable? And so on. As Claude LéviStrauss famously said, animals are good to think with. In this case, trout disturb the waters. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Brown, D. and Thom, C., 2025. The making of a (wild) fish. Environmental Humanities, 17(2), pp.411-429. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-11713470 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10566/21158 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Duke University Press | |
| dc.subject | Wildness | |
| dc.subject | Domestication | |
| dc.subject | Trout | |
| dc.subject | Genetic Manipulation | |
| dc.subject | The Anthropocene | |
| dc.title | The making of a (wild) fish | |
| dc.type | Article |