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Toxic Space and Time: Slow Violence, Necropolitics, and Petrochemical Pollution

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  • Thom Davies

Abstract

This article explores how time interacts forcefully with the experience of living within toxic spaces. Through ethnographic research and interviews with residents of a contaminated town in Louisiana, the article unpacks the uncertain temporalities of industrial pollution and potential means of resistance. Putting Mbembe's (2003) postcolonial treatise on necropolitics in conversation with Nixon's (2011) work on slow violence, the article examines the racialized, uneven, and attritional experience of petrochemical pollution in a former plantation landscape. By exploring the necropolitics of place, the article reveals how unjust exposure to toxic chemicals creates contemporary “death-worlds” that are experienced in temporally uncertain and constricting ways. The oppressive nature of uncertain temporality makes the material assemblages of petrochemical infrastructure daily environmental concerns. Yet by focusing on the lived experience of communities inhabiting this toxic geography, the article notes how witnessing gradual changes to the local environment has become a barometer for perceiving chronic pollution. The idea of “slow observation” is posited as a useful counterpoint to slow violence and the permanent wounding of toxic pollution. Slow observation is an important aspect of living with sustained environmental brutality and offers a potential means of political resistance and doing undone environmental justice.

Suggested Citation

  • Thom Davies, 2018. "Toxic Space and Time: Slow Violence, Necropolitics, and Petrochemical Pollution," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 108(6), pages 1537-1553, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:108:y:2018:i:6:p:1537-1553
    DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2018.1470924
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    Cited by:

    1. Marcantonio, Richard A., 2022. "Toxic diplomacy through environmental management: A necessary next step for environmental peacebuilding," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 28(C).
    2. Cindy McCulligh & Georgina Vega Fregoso, 2019. "Defiance from Down River: Deflection and Dispute in the Urban-Industrial Metabolism of Pollution in Guadalajara," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-26, November.
    3. Claas Kirchhelle, 2023. "The Antibiocene – towards an eco-social analysis of humanity’s antimicrobial footprint," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Lorenzo Feltrin & Alice Mah & David Brown, 2022. "Noxious deindustrialization: Experiences of precarity and pollution in Scotland’s petrochemical capital," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 40(4), pages 950-969, June.
    5. Yaakov Garb & Nelly Leblond, 2024. "Flowing toxics: E-waste field work in the Palestinian-Israeli space," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(1), pages 45-63, February.
    6. Jokela-Pansini, Maaret & Ippolito, Raffaele & Greenhough, Beth & Lora-Wainwright, Anna, 2024. "Creating safety amidst chronic contamination: A mixed-method analysis of residents’ experiences in a Southern Italian steel town," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 349(C).
    7. Charlene A. Dadzie, 2021. "Reimagining the Global South: Consumer welfare and public policy insights from the United States' Gulf Coast," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 1178-1199, September.
    8. Alexander Vorbrugg, 2022. "Ethnographies of slow violence: Epistemological alliances in fieldwork and narrating ruins," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 40(2), pages 447-462, March.
    9. A Raffaele Ippolito, 2024. "Toxicities that matter: Slow bureaucracy and polluting temporalities in a southern Italian city," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(1), pages 31-44, February.
    10. Justin Chun-Him Lau, 2023. "Towards a care perspective on waste: A new direction in discard studies," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 41(8), pages 1592-1608, December.
    11. Qingzhao Yu & Wentao Cao & Diana Hamer & Norman Urbanek & Susanne Straif-Bourgeois & Stephania A. Cormier & Tekeda Ferguson & Jennifer Richmond-Bryant, 2023. "Associations of COVID-19 Hospitalizations, ICU Admissions, and Mortality with Black and White Race and Their Mediation by Air Pollution and Other Risk Factors in the Louisiana Industrial Corridor, Mar," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-14, March.
    12. Thom Davies, 2022. "Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom?," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 40(2), pages 409-427, March.

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