#toxic worlds

[toxicseminar]

Noopiming

The new novel from the author of As We Have Always Done, a poetic world-building journey into the power of Anishinaabe life and traditions amid colonialism

another artifact: 

the quote “[plastic’s] long temporality means their future effects are largely unknown, making uncertain the guarantee of settler futures.” (Liboiron 17), reminded me of the book noompiming: the cure for white ladies because plastic tarps (their longevity and function) feature in the journey/lives of the characters in this book. the price of plastic tarps is often discussed, as well as their repurposing, which is interesting in thinking about the future of plastics but also our futures.

Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution is Colonialism. Duke University Press.

daniela + chrissy

[toxicseminar]

“I suggest it is not necessarily correct to judge that African American youth are now no longer viewed as vulnerable to lead. Rather, it is easier to imagine that in this pointedly transnational battle of sovereignty among major economic powers, black children are now the less urgent population under threat. It is, instead, as if black children are constructed as more proximate to lead itself, as naturalized to lead, new ground to the newest figure. A racial construction of blacks as already unruly, violent, contaminated, and men- tally deficient lies inherent in the current neoliberal economy, itself an economic mode conditioned and supported by a growing and incredibly powerful prison- industrial complex with its own structuration of race, class, and gender” (270).

Image source: https://www.cdc.gov/features/leadpoisoning/index.html

Quote source: Chen, Mel Y. "Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections (Links to an external site.)." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17, no. 2-3 (2011)

IMR

[toxicseminar]

Interactive Map: PFAS Contamination Crisis: New Data Show 1,361 Sites in 49 States

The known extent of contamination of American communities with the highly toxic fluorinated compounds known as PFAS continues to grow at an alarming rate.

Source: https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2019_pfas_contamination/map/

IMR

[toxicseminar]

In the gender-bending waters of Lake Apopka, alligators aren't quite male.

“While the news of rising incidences of fish tumors, clam and mussel lesions, Beluga whale breast and ovarian cancers, and disappearing amphibians have attracted a following in environmentalist circles, the documentation of gender-bending, homosexual, and emasculated frogs, fish, birds, and alligators has caught the attention of the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Kermit the Frog a Transsexual? Intersex Fish? Lesbian Gulls? Hermaphrodite Frogs? ‘Teeny Weenies’ (Dunne 1998)? ‘Silent Sperm’ (Wright 1996)? ‘Sexual Confusion in the Wild’ (Cone 1994)?” (202-203)

Source: DiChiro, Giovanna. “Polluted Politics? Confronting Toxic Discourse, Sex Panic, and Eco-Normativity” in Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, and Bruce Erickson. Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire. Indiana University Press, 2010.

IMR

[toxicseminar]

Female Fish Develop "Testes" in Gulf Dead Zone

Deprived of oxygen in the polluted Gulf of Mexico, female fish are producing sterile testes, scientists say.

This is an article mentioned in Malin-Ah King and Eva Hayward’s work. It’s about how the environment impacts the sex of fish

-CAJ

[toxicseminar]

Here is a photo of the effects of lead poisioning on a children’s bodies.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-skolnik-lead-poisoning-flint-michigan-water-filters-2016-2\

“That is, black children are assumed to be toxic, and lead’s threat to white children is not only that they risk becoming dull, or cognitively defective but also that they lose their class-elaborate white racial cerebrality and become suited to living in the ghettoes.” (Chen 270-1) 

-CAJ

[toxicseminar]

The gulls are alright: How a lesbian seagull discovery shook up 1970s conservatives

One of the first discoveries of homosexuality in animals ruffled more than few feathers.

This is an article about how seagulls have began to pair with each other due to environmental changes.

“The so-called gay gulls or lesbian gulls because female gulls were observed sharing clutches with other females” (Di Chiro 207).

-CAJ