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principles 'defining what objects can be identified, how they can be marked and in
what ways they can be ordered' (Bannet 1989:144). The idea of an ordering system
which can be used to characterise a society does, however, need considerable
qualification. We have suggested above that people are ambivalent about wild
nature, including animals, which can be simultaneously despised and admired.
Thus, the place of animals in the city is uncertain and often contested, rather than
being determined by epistemic principles. These principles constitute the basis of a
power structure or an ordering system, but one which is clearly resisted at the local
level.
Some more light is cast on this problem by Peters, who, in a remarkable essay
written in 1979, anticipates recent psychoanalytical readings of the city. She uses the
metaphors of 'the forest' and 'the clearing' to describe the changing relationship
between people and the built environment. The forest, she suggests, 'is still present
in our inner lives. It is our pre-conscious stage. Generally, it is so overlaid that we
are not aware of it. It surfaces only in dreams and myth' (Peters 1979: 80). The
clearing is a place of comfort and security, but also of fear, 'for the security is never
secure enough. There is always more work to do, excluding the forest, categorising
and creating' (Peters 1979:80). Peters (1979:80) then claims that '[we] push back
the inner forest by rejecting everything that does not fit into our self-image,
pretending these rejected instincts and emotions do not belong to us.' She cites the
case of a woman whom she knew who had an intense dislike of dandelions,
recognising the dandelions as a scapegoat, like immigrants or dogs:
[I]t doesn't matter what we fix on. [We] imbue it with all the characteristics
which we refuse to recognise in ourselves. Then we spend all our hatred on it,
pushing it outside the city, outside the clearing. We destroy it and, in the
process, we destroy ourselves.
(Peters 1979:84)
This argument anticipates Kristeva's thesis on abjection (Kristeva, 1982), and
elsewhere in her topic Peters suggests that we can reconnect with nature by
purposefully breaking down this urban order, and by accepting 'weeds' and other
natural elements that are 'out of place' according to hegemonic ordering principles.
In this vein, we could argue that 'wild spaces' in the city which provide the
habitats of feral cats may be particular sites of aversion, signifying 'the forest'
intruding into the city, although some people will see the same sites as valuable
refuges for those features of wild nature which we have otherwise lost. Thus, such
wild spaces may be sites of conflict. Overgrown derelict spaces might fall into this
category. Clearly, there will be no necessary tension over the presence of feral
colonies in such places if they are avoided or off the map. It is likely that feral cats
will be seen as most discrepant where the land is ordered and managed, with
pressure from some people to have the cats removed while others enjoy their
wildness. Thus, in Palo Alto, California, in 1995, there were complaints about
