Defending Dogs’ Hillock: The romance of ‘nature’ and administrative jujitsu as tactics of more-than-human resistance

Drawing on my personal involvement in defending Dogs’ Hillock – an ‘urban wasteland’ in a Warsaw neighbourhood – from transformation into an infrastructurally oversaturated city park, I examine a landscape of more-than-human resistance. First, discussing how the local residents-turned-activists were motivated by their emotional attachment to Dogs’ Hillock and concern for local fauna and flora, I suggest that ‘romance’ can be a catalyst of resistance. Next, I describe how the activists practised ‘administrative jujitsu’, using scientific expertise and administrative law to defend the Hillock against dominant power. I argue that more-than-human resistance consists in the articulation of human and non-human modalities of agency and vulnerability. To effectively resist the planning regime, non-human life and human affects must be articulated to forms of political agency, including demonstrations, data-gathering, and legal action. At the same time, the resistance remains more-than-human: it would be impossible without the specific processes and rhythms of life of various non-humans.