The Midwife and the Poet: Bioaccumulation and Retroactive Shock

Triangulating narratives from a prospective mining site in northern Norway, this article works to identify (and render graspable) a particular effect of retroactive shock—tracing its resonance through experiences of chemical exposure, colonial racism, cultural erasure, and destruction of the built e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental Humanities
Main Author: Reinert, Hugo
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Environmental Humanities Programme, University of 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10852/73166
http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-76287
https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-7349455
Description
Summary:Triangulating narratives from a prospective mining site in northern Norway, this article works to identify (and render graspable) a particular effect of retroactive shock—tracing its resonance through experiences of chemical exposure, colonial racism, cultural erasure, and destruction of the built environment. Linking these experiences, the argument sets up and explores an analytical space within which the toxic modernity of planetary capitalism can resonate, structurally, with the racist violence of state colonialism: a space that also, the author suggests, describes an important dimension of Anthropocene experience itself.