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Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode.
In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
368 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2011
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4361 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
June 12, 2012
This book is WOW. This book is yuck.
I already knew fossil fuel companies were slimy and money-hungry, avoiding environmental regulations whenever possible. I knew that the U.S. makes a habit of exporting our dirtiest businesses, and our trash (literally), to poor countries without the political sway to complain about it. I knew that the inhabitants of many small, low-lying islands, who have been faced with the dire consequences of global warming already, have been among the most vocal to speak out about the need for policy change.
Here's what I did not realize.
I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.
I did not realize oil companies have been excited about the new possibilities opened up by global warming, as the arctic continues to melt and make it more practical to start drilling up there. I did not realize the U.S. government was excited to help them expedite this process, by clearing away all the pesky red tape that would keep them from doing so.
I did not realize that it is a cold, hard fact that companies like Chevron spend more money advertising how much they care about alternative fuel sources than they actually spend on developing alternative fuels. Although this isn't too hard to imagine.
I did not realize that, at the same time Barack Obama was gently slapping the hand of B.P. after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he was making sure there was a maximum cap for the cost oil companies would have to pay in the event of a oil disasters in Indian waters, no matter how tremendous the disaster is. The maximum cap? 0.5% of what we expected B.P. to pay when a disaster happened in the U.S.
I did not realize that we only hear about the oil spills that we are expected to be interested in. For instance, we haven't heard much at all about the Exxon disaster's-worth of oil that has been spilled in Nigeria EVERY YEAR, for more than the last thirty years.I would have thought this was newsworthy.
I did not know that, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, B.P. was relying on clean-up methods that were more than forty years old and had been developed for fresh water, because they had never invested in developing clean-up methods since then, or for different ecosystems. I didn't realize that, while B.P. was so clueless about actually cleaning it up, they sent planes out at night to douse the most heavily polluted parts of the water in a chemical that would cause the oil to clump and sink, doing possibly more environmental damage, but making it much harder to determine how large the disaster was.
I really, really wish I didn't have to take this book back to the library tomorrow, so I could write a full review with sources, ala Bird Brian. Instead, You just get to see me in this state of shock as I try to make sense of all this. If you can find a copy of this, I definitely recommend it.
I already knew fossil fuel companies were slimy and money-hungry, avoiding environmental regulations whenever possible. I knew that the U.S. makes a habit of exporting our dirtiest businesses, and our trash (literally), to poor countries without the political sway to complain about it. I knew that the inhabitants of many small, low-lying islands, who have been faced with the dire consequences of global warming already, have been among the most vocal to speak out about the need for policy change.
Here's what I did not realize.
I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.
I did not realize oil companies have been excited about the new possibilities opened up by global warming, as the arctic continues to melt and make it more practical to start drilling up there. I did not realize the U.S. government was excited to help them expedite this process, by clearing away all the pesky red tape that would keep them from doing so.
I did not realize that it is a cold, hard fact that companies like Chevron spend more money advertising how much they care about alternative fuel sources than they actually spend on developing alternative fuels. Although this isn't too hard to imagine.
I did not realize that, at the same time Barack Obama was gently slapping the hand of B.P. after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he was making sure there was a maximum cap for the cost oil companies would have to pay in the event of a oil disasters in Indian waters, no matter how tremendous the disaster is. The maximum cap? 0.5% of what we expected B.P. to pay when a disaster happened in the U.S.
I did not realize that we only hear about the oil spills that we are expected to be interested in. For instance, we haven't heard much at all about the Exxon disaster's-worth of oil that has been spilled in Nigeria EVERY YEAR, for more than the last thirty years.I would have thought this was newsworthy.
I did not know that, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, B.P. was relying on clean-up methods that were more than forty years old and had been developed for fresh water, because they had never invested in developing clean-up methods since then, or for different ecosystems. I didn't realize that, while B.P. was so clueless about actually cleaning it up, they sent planes out at night to douse the most heavily polluted parts of the water in a chemical that would cause the oil to clump and sink, doing possibly more environmental damage, but making it much harder to determine how large the disaster was.
I really, really wish I didn't have to take this book back to the library tomorrow, so I could write a full review with sources, ala Bird Brian. Instead, You just get to see me in this state of shock as I try to make sense of all this. If you can find a copy of this, I definitely recommend it.
August 31, 2012
The most important book of literary criticism I've read in five or six years, maybe longer. And a bit disappointing.
I'll start with the positives. Nixon raises an absolutely central question for contemporary writers: how can we develop forms of expression which confront the problem of "slow violence"--primarily the environmental impact of our economic and political and personal actions--in a compelling manner. He's brilliant in framing the problem. Most of our narrative and polemical forms focus on spectacular, and usually individual, conflicts. Take three seconds to think about whatever movie's at the top of the box office list or whatever book's at the top of the NYTimes best seller list, and you'll get the point. I'm absolutely convinced that Nixon has asked the right question. It will be a part of how I think about literature from here on out.
Nixon also does a good job with the second part of his title, "the environmentalism of the poor." The take-home message here is that environmentalism isn't just for affluent western liberals; environmental degradation has an even more immediate impact on the lives of the poor, especially in the global South, which has been and is being used as a dumping ground and provider of resources for developed economices with very little attention to either short or long-term effect on the people who live there. Focusing on writers and activists from the global South--Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wangari Maathai,Arundhati Roy, Nadine Gordimer--Nixon argues convincingly that any approach to environmentalism that fails to enter into active dialog and alliance with their movements is both intellectually and politically doomed.
Finally (on the positive side), Nixon raises the question of what the "writer activist" can do to address the title issues. Again, it's the right question, but--and here I'm making the transition to the problems--I wish he'd done more to answer it. While Nixon's previous work as a critic--a terrific study of the Capetown Renaissance, South Africa's rough equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance and a study of V.S. Naipaul--makes it clear that he's got a deep grounding in the thorny questions concerning political literature, not much of that awareness is present here. Specifically, I wanted him to bring the writer-activist issues into conversation with what I'll shorthand as the Brecht-Lukasc debate. The central issue there was whether conventional literary forms (for Lukasc, the Dickensian novel and realistic drama) are capable of communicating politically challenging material in a way that leads to real action. Brecht said no, that what we need are forms which jar viewers out of their comfort zones and force them, often uncomfortably and against their wills. The specifics re. Slow Violence differ, but the question's related: can familiar polemical forms which highlight heroic individual political figures (as is the case with Wangari and Maathai) or op-ed pieces such as Roy's, do more than join in the deafening chorus of opinion which floods our media worlds today? Nixon (whose best book, the marvelous Dreambirds, uses ostriches as a point of entry into a huge range of issues) is fascinated with non-fiction prose forms. I tend to think that fictional narratives--novels, movies, TV mini-series--have a more central role to play in overcoming resistance and denial.
That leads to my final two criticisms or qualifications, both of which have to do with Nixon's text world. First, I would have liked to have seen more attention to Native American and global indigenous literature. The first books I'd use to spark a discussion of how to portray slow violence effectively would be Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and The Almanac of the Dead. Similarly, Nixon pays almost no attention to science fiction, although Indra Sinha's Animal's People shares some aesthetic strategies with, for example, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Doris Lessing's Canopus series (both of which related directly to Nixon's concerns). I don't think it's accidental that Nixon's discussion of the "environmental picaresque" in the chapter on Sinha and the Bhopal catastrophee was the one I'll be coming back to most frequently.
One last quibble. Although Nixon is probably right when he says that literary criticism about environmental issues--ecocriticism to use the argot--has been unremittingly Americanist in its focus, he oversimplifies several of the canonical writers who have been placed at the center of that canon. It may be true that the critics have been parochial and overly invested in the "sublime," but that's not an accurate description of Gary Snyder (who spent a great deal of time in Asia and is in active dialog with Asian environmentalists), Edward Abbey (who's anything but distanced in his take on how we relate to the land). or Terry Tempest Williams who, as a Mormon woman, has emphasized the issues of marginalization of the victims in ways that parallel the writers Nixon justly celebrates.
Finally, although Nixon does a terrific job communicating his ideas to a non-academic audience in public talks and journalistic essays, Slow Violence is a highly academic book. He spends a lot of time orienting his ideas towards contemporary arguments among literary critics. To be frank, I just don't give a damn about the relative prestige of post-colonialists or the theoretical discussion of cosmpolitanism vs. world literature. Some of the issues raised in those debates are interesting and, as SV demonstrates, a few are crucial. But I wish Nixon had written a book I could recommend for my non-academic friends, who on average are far far more aware of the issues he raises than those located within academia.
The fact that I've written what's probably the longest GR review I'm likely to says something about the importance of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. It frames questions and opens doors. It made me re-think my perspective on issues I've thought about a lot. A platform for further work, on the page and in the world.
I'll start with the positives. Nixon raises an absolutely central question for contemporary writers: how can we develop forms of expression which confront the problem of "slow violence"--primarily the environmental impact of our economic and political and personal actions--in a compelling manner. He's brilliant in framing the problem. Most of our narrative and polemical forms focus on spectacular, and usually individual, conflicts. Take three seconds to think about whatever movie's at the top of the box office list or whatever book's at the top of the NYTimes best seller list, and you'll get the point. I'm absolutely convinced that Nixon has asked the right question. It will be a part of how I think about literature from here on out.
Nixon also does a good job with the second part of his title, "the environmentalism of the poor." The take-home message here is that environmentalism isn't just for affluent western liberals; environmental degradation has an even more immediate impact on the lives of the poor, especially in the global South, which has been and is being used as a dumping ground and provider of resources for developed economices with very little attention to either short or long-term effect on the people who live there. Focusing on writers and activists from the global South--Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wangari Maathai,Arundhati Roy, Nadine Gordimer--Nixon argues convincingly that any approach to environmentalism that fails to enter into active dialog and alliance with their movements is both intellectually and politically doomed.
Finally (on the positive side), Nixon raises the question of what the "writer activist" can do to address the title issues. Again, it's the right question, but--and here I'm making the transition to the problems--I wish he'd done more to answer it. While Nixon's previous work as a critic--a terrific study of the Capetown Renaissance, South Africa's rough equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance and a study of V.S. Naipaul--makes it clear that he's got a deep grounding in the thorny questions concerning political literature, not much of that awareness is present here. Specifically, I wanted him to bring the writer-activist issues into conversation with what I'll shorthand as the Brecht-Lukasc debate. The central issue there was whether conventional literary forms (for Lukasc, the Dickensian novel and realistic drama) are capable of communicating politically challenging material in a way that leads to real action. Brecht said no, that what we need are forms which jar viewers out of their comfort zones and force them, often uncomfortably and against their wills. The specifics re. Slow Violence differ, but the question's related: can familiar polemical forms which highlight heroic individual political figures (as is the case with Wangari and Maathai) or op-ed pieces such as Roy's, do more than join in the deafening chorus of opinion which floods our media worlds today? Nixon (whose best book, the marvelous Dreambirds, uses ostriches as a point of entry into a huge range of issues) is fascinated with non-fiction prose forms. I tend to think that fictional narratives--novels, movies, TV mini-series--have a more central role to play in overcoming resistance and denial.
That leads to my final two criticisms or qualifications, both of which have to do with Nixon's text world. First, I would have liked to have seen more attention to Native American and global indigenous literature. The first books I'd use to spark a discussion of how to portray slow violence effectively would be Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and The Almanac of the Dead. Similarly, Nixon pays almost no attention to science fiction, although Indra Sinha's Animal's People shares some aesthetic strategies with, for example, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Doris Lessing's Canopus series (both of which related directly to Nixon's concerns). I don't think it's accidental that Nixon's discussion of the "environmental picaresque" in the chapter on Sinha and the Bhopal catastrophee was the one I'll be coming back to most frequently.
One last quibble. Although Nixon is probably right when he says that literary criticism about environmental issues--ecocriticism to use the argot--has been unremittingly Americanist in its focus, he oversimplifies several of the canonical writers who have been placed at the center of that canon. It may be true that the critics have been parochial and overly invested in the "sublime," but that's not an accurate description of Gary Snyder (who spent a great deal of time in Asia and is in active dialog with Asian environmentalists), Edward Abbey (who's anything but distanced in his take on how we relate to the land). or Terry Tempest Williams who, as a Mormon woman, has emphasized the issues of marginalization of the victims in ways that parallel the writers Nixon justly celebrates.
Finally, although Nixon does a terrific job communicating his ideas to a non-academic audience in public talks and journalistic essays, Slow Violence is a highly academic book. He spends a lot of time orienting his ideas towards contemporary arguments among literary critics. To be frank, I just don't give a damn about the relative prestige of post-colonialists or the theoretical discussion of cosmpolitanism vs. world literature. Some of the issues raised in those debates are interesting and, as SV demonstrates, a few are crucial. But I wish Nixon had written a book I could recommend for my non-academic friends, who on average are far far more aware of the issues he raises than those located within academia.
The fact that I've written what's probably the longest GR review I'm likely to says something about the importance of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. It frames questions and opens doors. It made me re-think my perspective on issues I've thought about a lot. A platform for further work, on the page and in the world.
Want to read
June 13, 2012 -Extract froma friend--
Here's what I did not realize.
I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.
I did not realize oil companies have been excited about the new possibilities opened up by global warming, as the arctic continues to melt and make it more practical to start drilling up there. I did not realize the U.S. government was excited to help them expedite this process, by clearing away all the pesky red tape that would keep them from doing so.
I did not realize that it is a cold, hard fact that companies like Chevron spend more money advertising how much they care about alternative fuel sources than they actually spend on developing alternative fuels. Although this isn't too hard to imagine.
I did not realize that, at the same time Barack Obama was gently slapping the hand of B.P. after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he was making sure there was a maximum cap for the cost oil companies would have to pay in the event of a oil disasters in Indian waters, no matter how tremendous the disaster is. The maximum cap? 0.5% of what we expected B.P. to pay when a disaster happened in the U.S.
I did not realize that we only hear about the oil spills that we are expected to be interested in. For instance, we haven't heard much at all about the Exxon disaster's-worth of oil that has been spilled in Nigeria EVERY YEAR, for more than the last thirty years.I would have thought this was newsworthy.
I did not know that, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, B.P. was relying on clean-up methods that were more than forty years old and had been developed for fresh water, because they had never invested in developing clean-up methods since then, or for different ecosystems. I didn't realize that, while B.P. was so clueless about actually cleaning it up, they sent planes out at night to douse the most heavily polluted parts of the water in a chemical that would cause the oil to clump and sink, doing possibly more environmental damage, but making it much harder to determine how large the disaster was.
I really, really wish I didn't have to take this book back to the library tomorrow, so I could write a full review with sources, ala Bird Brian. Instead, You just get to see me in this state of shock as I try to make sense of all this. If you can find a copy of this, I definitely recommend it.
Here's what I did not realize.
I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.
I did not realize oil companies have been excited about the new possibilities opened up by global warming, as the arctic continues to melt and make it more practical to start drilling up there. I did not realize the U.S. government was excited to help them expedite this process, by clearing away all the pesky red tape that would keep them from doing so.
I did not realize that it is a cold, hard fact that companies like Chevron spend more money advertising how much they care about alternative fuel sources than they actually spend on developing alternative fuels. Although this isn't too hard to imagine.
I did not realize that, at the same time Barack Obama was gently slapping the hand of B.P. after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he was making sure there was a maximum cap for the cost oil companies would have to pay in the event of a oil disasters in Indian waters, no matter how tremendous the disaster is. The maximum cap? 0.5% of what we expected B.P. to pay when a disaster happened in the U.S.
I did not realize that we only hear about the oil spills that we are expected to be interested in. For instance, we haven't heard much at all about the Exxon disaster's-worth of oil that has been spilled in Nigeria EVERY YEAR, for more than the last thirty years.I would have thought this was newsworthy.
I did not know that, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, B.P. was relying on clean-up methods that were more than forty years old and had been developed for fresh water, because they had never invested in developing clean-up methods since then, or for different ecosystems. I didn't realize that, while B.P. was so clueless about actually cleaning it up, they sent planes out at night to douse the most heavily polluted parts of the water in a chemical that would cause the oil to clump and sink, doing possibly more environmental damage, but making it much harder to determine how large the disaster was.
I really, really wish I didn't have to take this book back to the library tomorrow, so I could write a full review with sources, ala Bird Brian. Instead, You just get to see me in this state of shock as I try to make sense of all this. If you can find a copy of this, I definitely recommend it.
October 5, 2020
One of the most useful academic books I’ve come across so far, so I had to read it in full. Rob Nixon writes in an accessible and, at times, poetic way. The text focuses on the urgent intersection of environment and politics using literary perspectives to anchor each chapter. Running through the book is an eye-opening linguistic analysis, from “precision warfare” to “developmental refugees”, exploring how each phrase and metaphor serves to obscure ecologies of the aftermath. Nixon shows how it’s impossible (but necessary) to calculate the slow, ongoing, devastating effects of violence, be they soil degradation or birth defects.
The book brings in literary work from Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jamaica Kincaid, Abdelrahman Munif, Wangari Maathai, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, Arundhati Roy and more. All of the chapters are valuable, but some particularly memorable ones: chapter 3 looking at the struggle of the Ogoni people against Shell in the Niger Delta; chapter 6 boldly contrasting white supremacist capitalist modes of conservation with realities of war, displacement and survival; and chapter 7 which looks closely at “depleted uranium” and “cluster bombs” as misnomers against the continual effects of the 2003 Iraq War.
I really cannot recommend this book enough, whether you’re studying ecology, postcolonialism, literature or consider yourself to be an intersectional activist. Nixon’s book was published in 2011 and feels entirely relevant and recent – yet so much has happened since to further prove his arguments in real time.
The book brings in literary work from Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jamaica Kincaid, Abdelrahman Munif, Wangari Maathai, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, Arundhati Roy and more. All of the chapters are valuable, but some particularly memorable ones: chapter 3 looking at the struggle of the Ogoni people against Shell in the Niger Delta; chapter 6 boldly contrasting white supremacist capitalist modes of conservation with realities of war, displacement and survival; and chapter 7 which looks closely at “depleted uranium” and “cluster bombs” as misnomers against the continual effects of the 2003 Iraq War.
I really cannot recommend this book enough, whether you’re studying ecology, postcolonialism, literature or consider yourself to be an intersectional activist. Nixon’s book was published in 2011 and feels entirely relevant and recent – yet so much has happened since to further prove his arguments in real time.
February 5, 2025
Perhaps invests too much confidence in the power of the writer-activist, by 2025 standards. But this is still one of the best books about environmentalism and lit criticism that I’ve read. Every line hits, the writing is so prescient and far reaching… it gave me language to describe things in a way that I so needed!
December 2, 2023
My longest yeah boy ever
March 11, 2018
A lot of interesting concepts in this novel about the impact of less visible, delayed forms of environmental violence and how they disproportionately affect the POC poor. However, the whole thing read a lot like an ode to the writer-activists, and much like a high school book report at times, which, for me, detracted from the impact of the actual histories. It would have been much more impactful as a detailed chronology of slow violence, perhaps making occasional reference to writers as they relate to a particular history. It is currently rather convoluted and confusing, both in the chronology and the sentence structure.
April 10, 2021
uhghghgh reading this for my dissertation so can't comment too much but... really good. focussed a lot on how writers can draw attention to environmental crisis, on how they can make slow violence visible! as much a work of literary analysis as of a document of the environmentalism of the poor.
November 28, 2025
Основне питання, яке досліджує Ніксон: як автори можуть використовувати наративні форми, щоб привертати увагу до процесів, які за визначенням позбавлені швидкого драматизму, - "повільного насильства", спричиненого деградацією довкілля, повільним конанням від хвороб, які проявляють себе протягом десятиліть після того, як, наприклад, токсини були вивільнені в природу внаслідок техногенної катастрофи чи військових дій. Наприклад, відповідальна корпорація, яка і так була на іншому кінці світу, взагалі вже припинила своє існування, а спільнота, яка і так була на межі виживання і не мала політичних та економічних важелів, ще десятиліття розбирається з наслідками давно забутих світом подій. Як писати про це так, щоб утримувати увагу аудиторії?
Тут розглянуто досить багато різноманітних сюжетів - від техногенних катастроф з токсичними викидами до насильного переміщення людей з їхніх віддавніх земель задля розробки нафтогазових родовищ (в інтересах заморських капіталістів) чи побудови гігантських водосховищ (в інтересах національної держави, для якої зовсім не всі її громадяни рівноцінні), до відкладених наслідків воєн (на прикладі Іраку). Друга частина назви пов'язана з тим, що активізм та активістське письмо, яке розглядається тут, - це принципово інший вид екоактивізму порівняно з тим, який традиційно оспівував незмінену людьми прекрасну дику природу і часто був дискурсивним підкріпленням для того, аби переселяти корінне населення з їхніх традиційних земель, щоб створити для багатих споживачів з першого світу образ незайманої первозданної природи (наприклад, при створенні національних парків в США чи Південній Африці).
Це дуже цінна розвідка, до багатьох ідей з якої я ще буду повертатися.
Чого забракло? - автор ніби інколи забуває, що це літературознавча розвідка і повертається до обговорення певних ситуацій на першому рівні, а не на мета-рівні коментування наративів, які описують ці ситуації. Ну і варто зазначити, що навіть і там, де він розглядає тексти, далеко не всі тексти - це художка, багато з них - есеї, мемуари тощо. Я не хочу сказати, що публіцистичні чи нон-фікшн наративні форми не відповідають на питання про те, як наративні форми можуть привертати увагу до таких повільних процесів. Але те, як небагато тут власне художнього матеріалу, підкидає гіпотезу, що, можливо, власне художні форми для цього не оптимальні? Власне, хотілося б більше коментарів на цьому рівні.
Тут розглянуто досить багато різноманітних сюжетів - від техногенних катастроф з токсичними викидами до насильного переміщення людей з їхніх віддавніх земель задля розробки нафтогазових родовищ (в інтересах заморських капіталістів) чи побудови гігантських водосховищ (в інтересах національної держави, для якої зовсім не всі її громадяни рівноцінні), до відкладених наслідків воєн (на прикладі Іраку). Друга частина назви пов'язана з тим, що активізм та активістське письмо, яке розглядається тут, - це принципово інший вид екоактивізму порівняно з тим, який традиційно оспівував незмінену людьми прекрасну дику природу і часто був дискурсивним підкріпленням для того, аби переселяти корінне населення з їхніх традиційних земель, щоб створити для багатих споживачів з першого світу образ незайманої первозданної природи (наприклад, при створенні національних парків в США чи Південній Африці).
Це дуже цінна розвідка, до багатьох ідей з якої я ще буду повертатися.
Чого забракло? - автор ніби інколи забуває, що це літературознавча розвідка і повертається до обговорення певних ситуацій на першому рівні, а не на мета-рівні коментування наративів, які описують ці ситуації. Ну і варто зазначити, що навіть і там, де він розглядає тексти, далеко не всі тексти - це художка, багато з них - есеї, мемуари тощо. Я не хочу сказати, що публіцистичні чи нон-фікшн наративні форми не відповідають на питання про те, як наративні форми можуть привертати увагу до таких повільних процесів. Але те, як небагато тут власне художнього матеріалу, підкидає гіпотезу, що, можливо, власне художні форми для цього не оптимальні? Власне, хотілося б більше коментарів на цьому рівні.
May 21, 2020
Well I may not have bought 100 toilet rolls, but in the week before lockdown started I did raid the university library to stockpile all the books that could conceivably be useful for my essay, just in case it had to close... Now I'm stuck with them indefinitely, I thought I might as well read some of them properly.
This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Although Nixon did define and give examples of this concept of 'slow violence', the book was less about the violence itself and more focused on its representation in environmental writer-activism, and the various literary forms this can take. Places the emphasis firmly on the global south and attempts to bridge the divide between postcolonialism and environmental studies, discussing a huge breadth of environmental writing from across the world. Examines the reasons why writing from impoverished communities in the global south whose lives are threatened by environmental slow violence maybe might not *quite* fit the American environmentalist literary mould and tradition of Thoreau etc., and is utterly damning of criticism on that basis. Unflinchingly critical of American foreign policy, and abdication of responsibility by transnational corporations was a recurring theme.
Didn't actually mention the UK all that much, but when he did, there was some switching between English and British where I wasn't totally sure if it was an intentional differentiation, or whether he was reverting to the American tendency to conflate the two (I think Nixon himself isn't American, but he is based and lives in the US). Interesting to find out that the Deepwater Horizon spill apparently inspired a whole load of xenophobic, anti-British sentiment and that Obama took to referring to BP as British Petroleum.
I had to Google a lot of stuff while I was reading this, some of it for background knowledge, but also many, many words I didn't know. Yes it was conceptually quite dense so some very specific vocab was necessary at certain points, but I did find myself rolling my eyes when I got to 'subaqueous' in the epilogue. Ffs just write 'underwater'.
This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Although Nixon did define and give examples of this concept of 'slow violence', the book was less about the violence itself and more focused on its representation in environmental writer-activism, and the various literary forms this can take. Places the emphasis firmly on the global south and attempts to bridge the divide between postcolonialism and environmental studies, discussing a huge breadth of environmental writing from across the world. Examines the reasons why writing from impoverished communities in the global south whose lives are threatened by environmental slow violence maybe might not *quite* fit the American environmentalist literary mould and tradition of Thoreau etc., and is utterly damning of criticism on that basis. Unflinchingly critical of American foreign policy, and abdication of responsibility by transnational corporations was a recurring theme.
Didn't actually mention the UK all that much, but when he did, there was some switching between English and British where I wasn't totally sure if it was an intentional differentiation, or whether he was reverting to the American tendency to conflate the two (I think Nixon himself isn't American, but he is based and lives in the US). Interesting to find out that the Deepwater Horizon spill apparently inspired a whole load of xenophobic, anti-British sentiment and that Obama took to referring to BP as British Petroleum.
I had to Google a lot of stuff while I was reading this, some of it for background knowledge, but also many, many words I didn't know. Yes it was conceptually quite dense so some very specific vocab was necessary at certain points, but I did find myself rolling my eyes when I got to 'subaqueous' in the epilogue. Ffs just write 'underwater'.
February 6, 2019
The brilliance he's able to capture in a single, magnificently jargon-free phrase or sentence....the foresight and skill with which he turns environmentalist attention to time without abandoning either land or marginalized people....the way he makes novels I've never read accessible without resorting in any obvious or heavy-handed way to plot summary. Wow. So good, so provocative, so helpful
April 7, 2018
One of the most important books I've read in a long time.
September 22, 2020
yeah this book is a revolution in the humanities and i don't think i'm even using that word too lightly despite my drama. the book answers a lot of questions and concerns i had towards both environmental studies and literature, and clarifies and specifies on larger concepts i remembered ("why.we.hate.wilderness.literature!!!!") but forgot, exactly, why we hate wilderness literature. it's also a brave book. it takes a materialist stance towards the humanities, which i think my classes rarely did, and wades into the bureaucracy, literature of environmental impact reports, financial statement, etc. to both build a broader definition of what literature can be, but also how it's constantly showing up and defining our daily lives. this is what i wrote about the book at 2am a couple days ago:
"Ok why slow violence the book is so cool is that it counters the increased aestheticization of narrative that’s accompanies modernity and the consolidation of the means of production/wealth/resources in a few owners/hands, especially in the arts. If we’re only paying attention to aesthetics, like we’re taught to in typical English literature, what are we missing? Here, we are missing entire unimagined communities, who, through neoliberal globalization, are seen as surplus peoples, unnecessary to productive global “development” and are physically/imaginatively displaced from any type of visible sphere. The only way to pay attention to these folks is to pay attention to how material consolidation has left them poor, broken, oftentimes homeless and voiceless. To help give them voice, we must counter the narrativization of English literature and explore new modes of what literature even means, and what it can do. Aestheticization also only occurs once people think they can live outside, and beyond, their material means and conditions. Once the basic necessities are met. This is why these people control these narratives; they have the time and the resources to. They imagine their world — rarely beyond. The bravery of a book like this is that the outcome of a new sect environmental humanities is no less than a full on, open rebellion against the global neoliberal order and actors like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, Shell, US government, BP etc. The outcomes of a book like this are very material. It’s a discipline of the global underdog; one that has a clear objective and goal (healthy, sustainable, free living for everyone); has a clear enemy (the transnational corporation); and has a clear leader — the third world communities displaced (in place), burdened, dispossessed, left for dead, annihilitated, murdered, executed, imprisoned, encamped and the activist-writers that imagine, and help us, imagine these struggles which are never-ending, continuing, hopefully still fighting against all the odds thrown against them."
"Ok why slow violence the book is so cool is that it counters the increased aestheticization of narrative that’s accompanies modernity and the consolidation of the means of production/wealth/resources in a few owners/hands, especially in the arts. If we’re only paying attention to aesthetics, like we’re taught to in typical English literature, what are we missing? Here, we are missing entire unimagined communities, who, through neoliberal globalization, are seen as surplus peoples, unnecessary to productive global “development” and are physically/imaginatively displaced from any type of visible sphere. The only way to pay attention to these folks is to pay attention to how material consolidation has left them poor, broken, oftentimes homeless and voiceless. To help give them voice, we must counter the narrativization of English literature and explore new modes of what literature even means, and what it can do. Aestheticization also only occurs once people think they can live outside, and beyond, their material means and conditions. Once the basic necessities are met. This is why these people control these narratives; they have the time and the resources to. They imagine their world — rarely beyond. The bravery of a book like this is that the outcome of a new sect environmental humanities is no less than a full on, open rebellion against the global neoliberal order and actors like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, Shell, US government, BP etc. The outcomes of a book like this are very material. It’s a discipline of the global underdog; one that has a clear objective and goal (healthy, sustainable, free living for everyone); has a clear enemy (the transnational corporation); and has a clear leader — the third world communities displaced (in place), burdened, dispossessed, left for dead, annihilitated, murdered, executed, imprisoned, encamped and the activist-writers that imagine, and help us, imagine these struggles which are never-ending, continuing, hopefully still fighting against all the odds thrown against them."
January 30, 2021
It is perhaps fitting that it took me a while to read this book. Nixon's prose is slow, at times beautiful, and he writes words that should not be rushed. Essentially the thesis of this book is that environmental disasters and associated violence have persistent impacts on poor and communities of color, but that because of our collective short attention span much of this violence is willfully ignored or discounted. It is a book I have seen referenced a lot and I thought I should read it myself, and while parts of it were achingly beautiful, it is, fundamentally literary criticism - and I felt like the kid who didn't do the assigned readings, as much of the primary literature he is critiquing I had not heard of. This created a bit of an in-group/out-group feel with me being decidedly in the latter. However, it is an important book to try and work your way through, as I think it does a wonderful job explaining the myriad ways that violence, slow yet devastating, is being off sourced to the poor.
July 21, 2023
This book is great for a lot of reasons! Nixon mixes insights from post colonialism and environmentalism and uses a diverse cast of writer-activists and their works as an entry point to talk about “slow violence”. Nixon seeks to reframe what we typically think of violence (a spectacular individual immediate act) to include the attritional violence of ecological destruction. His approach is laudably intersectional and while the tone is academic he uses accessible language intentionally. More thoughts on this on the blog/sub stack!
October 12, 2020
This reminded me of that Nate Bargatze stand up bit where Leonardo DiCaprio just tweets out various distressing facts like "Humans are killing sharks at aggressive rates! There will soon be no more sharks if things keep going the way they're going!" and he just has to sit there, reading, with no solution in sight.
October 5, 2022
This was a LOT to get through in such a short time, but I genuinely learned so much and I want everyone to read this. More to come after I finish the assignment I had to read this for...
Read
January 20, 2025Pretty powerful stuff that helped me rethink about environmental issues, especially importance on justice oriented environmentalism. Definitely textbook material!!!
Also has some interesting references. My reading list just got bulked up.
Also has some interesting references. My reading list just got bulked up.
September 18, 2024
Took me forever to read but such an interesting and important book! Ron Nixon marries the fields of eco-criticism and postcolonial studies in a great way, showcasing the work of activist journalists in the global south who are fighting against the environmental injustices caused by US foreign policy. He also very strongly highlights the damaging effects of western environmentalism/conservation and the colonialism hidden beneath these practices.
January 10, 2022
Literally changed my life and the way i view fiction. I’m writing about this for my portfolio on postcolonial ecocriticism and i truly cannot find any flaws within this text. It’s a perfect and a must read
EDIT: yes i know i said there are no flaws but after going over this text again i realised (correct me if i’m wrong) that there is no focus on Native American and indigenous peoples literature. I feel like if you are going to discuss environmental issues, you cannot leave out the global indigenous peoples
EDIT: yes i know i said there are no flaws but after going over this text again i realised (correct me if i’m wrong) that there is no focus on Native American and indigenous peoples literature. I feel like if you are going to discuss environmental issues, you cannot leave out the global indigenous peoples
November 12, 2017
useful and instructive for developing a terminology for ongoing ecological disasters and why post-colonialism and environmental studies ought to be more compatible than they heretofore have been. alas, while focusing on the "slow violence" occurring in tandem with a sped up world of briefer attention spans, one notices how much ecological damage has emerged in subsequent years that Nixon could not have foreseen (fracking, Flint, etc)
January 18, 2021
Very interesting but I found it hard to follow in some parts sine it talked about other texts that I had not read. It requires a broad personal knowledge to be fully understood.
August 14, 2025
A very interesting read. The focus is on the consequences of the western fossil-hungry lifestyle on the environment and the communities which inhabit the affected places, and it really does shed light on a whole slew of issues which seem to fall through the grasp of news and media due to a lack of newsworthy clickbait potential.
Reading this book was not easy - I had never really read a full text from the humanities academic panorama and the language is not the most accessible, but it was truly worth it. Notably, it was full to the brim with quotes from other works, which extended my to-read Goodreads list by quite a bit.
The approach was also very interesting: an expert in post-colonial studies exploring the implications of neocolonialism and all the different forms of violence that come from it. The concept of slow violence, issues of which the effects are delayed in time and hardly ever considered part of the problem that generated them, was enlightening, as was the concept of environmentalism of the poor (which is “frequently triggered when an official landscape is forcibly imposed on a vernacular one”).
“The forces of inaction have deep pockets. Environmental activists face (…) a culture of doubt around the science of slow violence (…) whose job is to maintain populist levels of uncertainty sufficient to guarantee inaction. (…) [For] Big Oil and Big Coal, doubt is more than a state of mind - it’s a bankable product.”
“If the twentieth century has been declared, by turns, the American Century and the Century of Oil, it is by now manifest that the twenty-first century will be known as neither.”
“The marvels exist but are unavailable (…). Petro-capitalism’s widening chasm between the haves and the never-will-haves.”
“The gap of forty-three places between Saudi Arabia’s GDP and its Human Development Index was exceeded only by three other nation-states, and so-called oil rich: Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Gabon.”
“As a rule of thumb, the greater a nation’s reliance on a single product for its economic survival, the higher the chances that that society is riddled with corruption and afflicted by profoundly skewed income distribution.”
“Saro-Wiwa’s campaign challenged stereotypes about environmental activists: inevitably white, young, middle-class Europeans or Americans who can afford to hug trees because they have been spared more desperate battles. (…) we are now seeing indigenous environmentalisms proliferate under pressure of local necessity.”
“The notion of developmental refugee holds in tension an official, centripetal logic of national development on the one hand and on the other, a terrifying, centrifugal narrative of displacement, dispossession, and exodus.”
“Game reserves were represented as positively archaic - unimproved places where whites could venture for a spiritual renewal - whereas native reserves were negatively archaic, places set aside for the uncivilized.”
“Gateway, sanctuary, refuge, retreat, terms that take on diametrically opposed valences depending on whether leisure or terror is the propulsive force.”
“Military euphemisms like ‘precision’ warfare, ‘surgical’ strikes, ‘smart’ wars, ‘depleted’ uranium, and ‘miracle’ drones have helped legitimize recent high-tech conflicts while concealing their long-term toxic and radiological impact.”
“Despots may be deposed, but environmental mayhem outlives regime change.”
Reading this book was not easy - I had never really read a full text from the humanities academic panorama and the language is not the most accessible, but it was truly worth it. Notably, it was full to the brim with quotes from other works, which extended my to-read Goodreads list by quite a bit.
The approach was also very interesting: an expert in post-colonial studies exploring the implications of neocolonialism and all the different forms of violence that come from it. The concept of slow violence, issues of which the effects are delayed in time and hardly ever considered part of the problem that generated them, was enlightening, as was the concept of environmentalism of the poor (which is “frequently triggered when an official landscape is forcibly imposed on a vernacular one”).
“The forces of inaction have deep pockets. Environmental activists face (…) a culture of doubt around the science of slow violence (…) whose job is to maintain populist levels of uncertainty sufficient to guarantee inaction. (…) [For] Big Oil and Big Coal, doubt is more than a state of mind - it’s a bankable product.”
“If the twentieth century has been declared, by turns, the American Century and the Century of Oil, it is by now manifest that the twenty-first century will be known as neither.”
“The marvels exist but are unavailable (…). Petro-capitalism’s widening chasm between the haves and the never-will-haves.”
“The gap of forty-three places between Saudi Arabia’s GDP and its Human Development Index was exceeded only by three other nation-states, and so-called oil rich: Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Gabon.”
“As a rule of thumb, the greater a nation’s reliance on a single product for its economic survival, the higher the chances that that society is riddled with corruption and afflicted by profoundly skewed income distribution.”
“Saro-Wiwa’s campaign challenged stereotypes about environmental activists: inevitably white, young, middle-class Europeans or Americans who can afford to hug trees because they have been spared more desperate battles. (…) we are now seeing indigenous environmentalisms proliferate under pressure of local necessity.”
“The notion of developmental refugee holds in tension an official, centripetal logic of national development on the one hand and on the other, a terrifying, centrifugal narrative of displacement, dispossession, and exodus.”
“Game reserves were represented as positively archaic - unimproved places where whites could venture for a spiritual renewal - whereas native reserves were negatively archaic, places set aside for the uncivilized.”
“Gateway, sanctuary, refuge, retreat, terms that take on diametrically opposed valences depending on whether leisure or terror is the propulsive force.”
“Military euphemisms like ‘precision’ warfare, ‘surgical’ strikes, ‘smart’ wars, ‘depleted’ uranium, and ‘miracle’ drones have helped legitimize recent high-tech conflicts while concealing their long-term toxic and radiological impact.”
“Despots may be deposed, but environmental mayhem outlives regime change.”
February 8, 2021
Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor is easily one of the more insightful and unique books I’ve read. Rob Nixon opens with a discussion about how climate change and environmental degradation disproportionality inflict a new form of insidious violence on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. However, the book’s focus shifts to the difficulty associated with communicating this slow violence that occurs over large temporal and spatial dimensions. Nixon, a professor in Humanities and the Environment, questions how artists can “devise arresting stories, images, and symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects.” To this degree, Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor engages with this subject within a literary framework. Nixon discusses environmental justice by placing writer-activists from affected areas in the global South at the forefront of the book’s focus. It’s a compelling method of addressing the egregious behavior of oil companies and certain countries (operating under postcolonial and neoliberal creeds) while highlighting the necessity of broadening the scope of voices within this field. Besides his innovative literary approach, Nixon’s writing is accessible and refreshing. It took me longer than normal to read simply because I spent so much time collecting quotes and passages. The goal of this book is ambitious, and although some questions remain unanswered, it’s a mandatory read for those interested in environmental justice.
“By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.”
“Both Carson and Sinha give the absence wrought by toxicity a sensory density; in so doing they strike a complex temporal note, through blended elegy and apocalypse, lamentation and premonition, inducing in us a double gaze backward in time to loss and forward to yet unrealized threats. Through this double gaze they restage environmental time, asserting its broad parameters against the myopic, fevered immediacy that governs the society of the catastrophe-as-spectacle.”
“By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.”
“Both Carson and Sinha give the absence wrought by toxicity a sensory density; in so doing they strike a complex temporal note, through blended elegy and apocalypse, lamentation and premonition, inducing in us a double gaze backward in time to loss and forward to yet unrealized threats. Through this double gaze they restage environmental time, asserting its broad parameters against the myopic, fevered immediacy that governs the society of the catastrophe-as-spectacle.”
April 1, 2022
This book is worth the journey.
The author confronts the reader with a never-ending stream of complex sentences that sadly obfuscates the messaging the first read through. Once digested, however, there’s a lot there. The three key nuggets are: (1) Environmental degradation is a form of “slow violence” (the type that happens gradually and out of sight), that (2) affects the poor and powerless disproportionately, especially when considering their limited contribution to the problem; and (3) the role of “activists-writers” have a significant place in the debate and hence the formation / implementation of public policy around the issues (for good or bad). The book explores a wide range of pertinent elements of this debate drawing on the writings of multiple commentators.
On a side but relevant note, the author uses (coins?) the expression “bewilderer” to describe commercial and financial sector supported advocates who stymie progress towards sustainable development by creating doubts about the underlying scientific theory and empirical validation. Think cigarettes, DDT, and now Climate Change.
Another useful concept discussed is “structural violence” (a form of indirect violence) where the violent act only crystallizes long after the actions that gave rise to it have taken place.
The author confronts the reader with a never-ending stream of complex sentences that sadly obfuscates the messaging the first read through. Once digested, however, there’s a lot there. The three key nuggets are: (1) Environmental degradation is a form of “slow violence” (the type that happens gradually and out of sight), that (2) affects the poor and powerless disproportionately, especially when considering their limited contribution to the problem; and (3) the role of “activists-writers” have a significant place in the debate and hence the formation / implementation of public policy around the issues (for good or bad). The book explores a wide range of pertinent elements of this debate drawing on the writings of multiple commentators.
On a side but relevant note, the author uses (coins?) the expression “bewilderer” to describe commercial and financial sector supported advocates who stymie progress towards sustainable development by creating doubts about the underlying scientific theory and empirical validation. Think cigarettes, DDT, and now Climate Change.
Another useful concept discussed is “structural violence” (a form of indirect violence) where the violent act only crystallizes long after the actions that gave rise to it have taken place.
April 22, 2023
this book did not come to play and was able to marry ecocriticism with postcolonial studies - i've always side-eyed the 'enivronmental humanities' bc I felt like it can stray into the territories of: (A) white-guy-with-dreads (B) malthusianism in the name of the turtles (C) Thoreau & emerson fanboys, or (D) other forms of political quietism/all of the above; but this swerved away from all that and also explained why and how there's an alternative criticism to be found if we think ecocritically w/postcolonial studies. Obvi this mantle has been taken up with appropriate fervor since this book's publication in 2011, but this is an OG for sure and also written like butter. To be clear, this is a book about literary studies, and I think some of the other reviewers were expecting it to do the work of the social sciences. (it follows the precedent set by Said's work qua literary criticism--orientalism was among many other things a dissection of Conrad)
Also someone I have a crush on recommended this to me when I was explaining a project I was working on and i was hoping it would be good and IT WAS so ya(:
Also someone I have a crush on recommended this to me when I was explaining a project I was working on and i was hoping it would be good and IT WAS so ya(:
Want to read
July 9, 2024
Update 9/7/2024
(ยังอ่านไม่จบนะ และอาจจะไม่มีโอกาสอ่านจบถ้าแอคเค้า ฬ มันเข้าถึงทั้งเล่มไม่ได้ 555)
มีโอกาสได้อ่านแค่ส่วนเดียวเพราะใช้แอคนิสิต access ตอนทำธีสิส 55555 แต่ก็เปิดโลกในระดับนึง โดย rob nixon นำเสนอคอนเซปต์ slow violence การกระทำความรุนแรงโดยรัฐที่เกิดขึ้นอย่างช้ามากๆจนคนปกติไม่สามารถรับรู้ได้ในระดับของชีวิตประจำวัน ผู้เขียนเอาส่วนนี้ไปเชื่อมกับปัญหาสิ่งแวดล้อม เช่นเวลาที่แท่นขุดเจาะน้ำมันระเบิด หรือเรือขนเชื้อเพลิงรั่ว หลายอย่างมันเกิดจากการจัดการโดยรัฐที่ผิดพลาด หรือไม่มีกฏหมายรัดกุมมากพอจนทำให้บริษัทเอกชนประมาทเลินเล่อ หรือถึงจะมี แต่พอเกิดเหตุพวกนี้ ฝั่งรัฐก็ไม่ได้มีการจัดการความเสียหายที่มีปนะสิทธิภาพ ระหว่างนี้น้ำมันที่รั่วไปแล้วก็ไปทำลายระบบนิเวศ เกิดเป็น GHG gas อะไรก็ว่าไป ย้อนกลับมาทำลายสุขภาพของผู้คนในระยะยาว ยาวแบบ 10-100ปีไม่สามารถบอกได้ เอาเป็นว่าทั้งในเชิงนโนบาย หรือ resource mobilization การตัดสินใจของรัฐเหล่านี้ ปลายทางมันส่งผลกระทบให้ประชาชนตาดำๆอย่างเราล้วน "ตายผ่อนส่ง" ทั้งสิ้น
อันนี้จะไปพ่วงกับทฤษฎี necropolitics ที่มีรากมาจาก biopolitics ของฟูโกต์อีกที
มีโอกาสได้อ่านแค่ส่วนเดียวเพราะใช้แอคนิสิต access ตอนทำธีสิส 55555 แต่ก็เปิดโลกในระดับนึง โดย rob nixon นำเสนอคอนเซปต์ slow violence การกระทำความรุนแรงโดยรัฐที่เกิดขึ้นอย่างช้ามากๆจนคนปกติไม่สามารถรับรู้ได้ในระดับของชีวิตประจำวัน ผู้เขียนเอาส่วนนี้ไปเชื่อมกับปัญหาสิ่งแวดล้อม เช่นเวลาที่แท่นขุดเจาะน้ำมันระเบิด หรือเรือขนเชื้อเพลิงรั่ว หลายอย่างมันเกิดจากการจัดการโดยรัฐที่ผิดพลาด หรือไม่มีกฏหมายรัดกุมมากพอจนทำให้บริษัทเอกชนประมาทเลินเล่อ หรือถึงจะมี แต่พอเกิดเหตุพวกนี้ ฝั่งรัฐก็ไม่ได้มีการจัดการความเสียหายที่มีปนะสิทธิภาพ ระหว่างนี้น้ำมันที่รั่วไปแล้วก็ไปทำลายระบบนิเวศ เกิดเป็น GHG gas อะไรก็ว่าไป ย้อนกลับมาทำลายสุขภาพของผู้คนในระยะยาว ยาวแบบ 10-100ปีไม่สามารถบอกได้ เอาเป็นว่าทั้งในเชิงนโนบาย หรือ resource mobilization การตัดสินใจของรัฐเหล่านี้ ปลายทางมันส่งผลกระทบให้ประชาชนตาดำๆอย่างเราล้วน "ตายผ่อนส่ง" ทั้งสิ้น
อันนี้จะไปพ่วงกับทฤษฎี necropolitics ที่มีรากมาจาก biopolitics ของฟูโกต์อีกที
October 24, 2022
I returned to this last month so I might note down some thoughts.
I was surprised by how much of this book was about essays, essayists and literary criticism. A cool feature of this is that the introduction and development of concepts also takes place in an organic, essayistic, accessible fashion that is very convincing. I found the prose accessible and is not very clunky in terms of having academic jargon but then I've been a grad student for the past 7 years so maybe I'm not the best judge of that.
At certain points I wish the book had a bit more of a critical distance between its own perspective and some of the activists/writers it was channeling. I felt like we didn't get much sustained critical reflection on Said or Arundhati Roy but then again maybe it's not necessarily the authors job to do that. But still the comparative perspective, the range of topics, the interlocking of so many useful concepts elaborated in accessible fashion. I can see why the book is a classic.
I was surprised by how much of this book was about essays, essayists and literary criticism. A cool feature of this is that the introduction and development of concepts also takes place in an organic, essayistic, accessible fashion that is very convincing. I found the prose accessible and is not very clunky in terms of having academic jargon but then I've been a grad student for the past 7 years so maybe I'm not the best judge of that.
At certain points I wish the book had a bit more of a critical distance between its own perspective and some of the activists/writers it was channeling. I felt like we didn't get much sustained critical reflection on Said or Arundhati Roy but then again maybe it's not necessarily the authors job to do that. But still the comparative perspective, the range of topics, the interlocking of so many useful concepts elaborated in accessible fashion. I can see why the book is a classic.
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November 30, 2022I’m not going to rate this book because I think I would have appreciate all the info in it much more as part of a class where the authors and essays discussed in this book were read alongside it to provide more context to the comparisons and analysis of the author. I’m very interested in economic development and literature and the interplay between development, environmentalism, racism, and the global south, and I think this book would be really good as part of a syllabus for a college course.
The overall analysis of the lingering and long term impacts of war and chemical spills and other catastrophes including climate change was interesting and good to think about in terms of how to bring attention to consequences that are not immediate.
The overall analysis of the lingering and long term impacts of war and chemical spills and other catastrophes including climate change was interesting and good to think about in terms of how to bring attention to consequences that are not immediate.
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