Neighbourhood violence

As I read Kevin Brophy’s Calibre Prize winning essay in the Australian Book Review this afternoon I could only nod my head in silent agreement – I too have never been good at violence. For a long year I lived opposite a woman whose backyard stretched along our street. Behind the looping wire fence lived a feral pig, several querulous cockatoos, a joey, some lambs, a calf and six dogs. For the sake of neighbourhood peace and unity I mostly ignored their sonic and physical intrusions into my garden. I even managed to contain my fear of the pit bull terrier whenever it bulldozed through her fence, across the road and over my usually impregnable boundary. My daughter and I would slip a noose over its head, haul it back to its chain around the mulberry tree and run home again, trembling as it lunged for our heels. While ever it did no actual harm we were anxious to maintain harmony and not involve the dog authorities.

Imagine my shock and disbelief when I received a notice that my dog, a lolloping Labrador, had been declared a nuisance by the authorities. My neighbour had urged a pedestrian frightened by his fence-side barking to report him. He was usually kept at the back of the house out of sight of the animals across the road and passers by.

This was in contrast to the constant and much more dangerous threat from the pit bull terrier. My neighbour's reply to my tolerance was to involve the authorities without any consulting me and with a vindictiveness that I found alarming. I felt that the compass for my dealings with others had spun off the dial.

Kevin Brophy struggles to trace the source of and fuel for the escalating violence of his neighbours. He despairs at the disappearance of his “universal ethic of equality and brotherhood”. Up against the limit of his liberal tolerance he cannot imagine them as flesh and blood humans. Disbelief at their nonsensical responses to any attempt at appeasement mounts. Chaos reigns. He examines his attitudes to violence in the light of Zizek’s essay but is only able to come to terms with their seemingly irrational behaviour and his fear by continuing to live as if his pragmatic position in the situation worked. The only solution in the end was to find new neighbours. He bought the neighbours’ house. I moved to another town where my dog and I live incognito, our violent pasts hidden from the neighbours by high picket fences.