Abstract
Might the formulation of an "interspecies cosmopolitanism" refocus human responses to biodiversity collapse and help to stave off further ecocide? Calling forth such life-affirming possibilities seems critical in dark times, if also challenging. As theorists have pointed out, an interspecies cosmopolitanism demands a different account of humanism from anthropocentric internationalism. This chapter examines real-world predicaments of interspecies care through the example of a particular project of ecological restoration in Aotearoa New Zealand. The “Predator-Free 2050” campaign enjoins thousands of human citizens in interspecies care as they restore local environments and protect indigenous flora and fauna. Yet it also involves considerable violence against certain introduced nonhuman animals and plants that threaten those species defined as endemic. This violence raises difficult questions about what we mean by interspecies relations, how they are conducted, and whether the call to re-entangle humans with a more-than-human world is adequate to the challenges of planet in crisis. Does interspecies cosmopolitanism do enough to destabilize a sense of what the human is on an indifferent planet? Or, in pursuing the cosmopolitical ideal, is all we are doing restabilizing a belief in human potential, albeit in relation to other-than-humans, in a world we mistakenly believe we can ever remake?