Foucault’s writings on biopolitics arefocused squarely on the management of human populations, including howracism segments them into sub-populations or “sub-species,” some of whichare made killable purportedly in order to ensure the survival and health ofothers. Some of his followers, meanwhile, have explored how biopolitics canhelp us think about the control of animal populations as well.

charac-terizations of humans as vermin can be turned back against those who wieldthe metaphor

Wright makes the rat an emblemof “black suffering as well as black persistence” because of “its hunger andspirited refusal to be captured.”

colonial Rhodesia guer-rilla fighters for independence were construed and fought as pests in needof eradication

vermin “reproduceso rapidly and in such numbers they threaten to overwhelm their biological,environmental and—from a human perspective—sociological contexts.

“[T]he guerrilla thrived onbeing a pest: hindering, distracting, dispersing, and destroying massedRSF formations; prolonging the war where the state planned for a shortone, thereby draining its resources; and infiltrating instead of advancing enmasse—always playing cat and mouse until the moment was right to standand fight. The guerrilla did not just move like a pest; he was a vermin being.”3

That is, vermin become vermin when they intrude on spacesthat have been designated for human use only.

Like the trickster tales discussed above, the films we are lookingat here do not make animals the focal point, but use them as a means of“thinking with” humans.

The trickster is an animal low on the peckingorder (like a rabbit) who finds himself in a jam and must use his wits, charms,and other skill sets to outfox his more powerful enemies. He is an animalsurrogate that speaks softly of strategies for resistance

pecies that are considered “out of place,”

qualities of vermin also make thema ripe symbol for resistance. To be like vermin is to be tenacious and to refusethe spatial exclusions that people like Dean would enforce

too many (“like rats”), they are out of place, and they are therefore killablewithout ethical qualm