Wild dog dreaming: love and extinction

Abstract

This book is part of the "Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism" series, which explores interconnections between environmentalism, literature, humanities, and philosophy. Although the dingo is the focal point, the book is not about the wild dog per se. Rather, Rose (Macquarie Univ., Australia), an anthropologist, uses the dingo as a touchstone to explore ethical connectivity between human and nonhuman life. She draws on conversations with Australian Aborigines about dreaming.

49-1450 QL795 2010-35062 CIP Rose, Deborah Bird. Wild dog dreaming: love and extinction. Virginia, 2011. 168p bibl index afp ISBN 9780813930916, $29.50; ISBN 9780813931074 e-book, contact publisher for price

This book is part of the "Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism" series, which explores interconnections between environmentalism, literature, humanities, and philosophy. Although the dingo is the focal point, the book is not about the wild dog per se. Rather, Rose (Macquarie Univ., Australia), an anthropologist, uses the dingo as a touchstone to explore ethical connectivity between human and nonhuman life. She draws on conversations with Australian Aborigines about dreaming. The Aborigines' dreamtime stories repeated down through time deal with their relationship with life, death, afterlife, kinship with nonhuman life, extinctions under early white settlement, and human efforts to eliminate dingoes, with which Aborigines have a close kinship. According to dreamtime stories, both have shared origins, and thus Aborigines strongly oppose dingo persecutions. Rose has written a well-referenced, wide-ranging, and sometimes abstract dialogue between dreamtime stories and Western existentialist philosophy on life, death, kinship, and dualism with nonhuman life. Without some familiarity with existentialist philosophy and knowledge of dreaming, many readers will find parts of this book difficult to follow. Summing Up: Recommended. HH Upper-division undergraduates and above.-R. L. Smith, emeritus, West Virginia University