Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”

July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon

Sponsored by the Oecologies Research Group

Past and present criticisms of enclosure risk affirming its setting of more-than-human life against human society and space. In scorning post-Conquest forest law, for example, one eleventh-century chronicler castigates William the Conqueror for having “loved the forest animals as if he were their father.” Through the unjustly queer filial bond of “deorfrith” (deer forest; game protection), the irate writer suggests, the king …