waste

Michael Marder interprets the “toxic flood” we are living or dying through as a global dump. On his reading, multiple levels of existence—from the psychic to the physiological, from the environmental-elemental to the planetary—are being converted into a dump, a massive and still growing hodgepodge of industrial and consumer by-products and emissions; shards of metaphysical ideas and theological dreams; radioactive materials; light, sound, and other modes of sensory pollution; pesticides and herbicides; and so forth.

Miriam Tola explores the entwinement of fascist biopolitics and the chemical industry at the site of the former chemical-textile plant Ex-SNIA Viscosa from the 1920s to the 1950s, and how this affected human and nonhuman bodies.

In a special section entitled “Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities,” Sara J. Grossman reflects on the definition of disability and disabled communities within environmental humanities.

This article explores the intersections of daily life and environmental law in modern China. With comparative perspectives on analogous challenges in the United States, it reports on these critical domestic challenges for China at a pivotal moment in its reemergence as a dominant world power.

This collection investigates the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted.

Stefan Skrimshire considers the ethical question of how to communicate with future human societies in terms of long-term disposal of radioactive fuel. He proposes that the confessional form (as propagated by Saint Augustine and critiqued by Derrida) may become increasingly pertinent to activists, artists, and faith communities making sense of humanity’s ethical commitments in deep time.

In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism warns the reader about the possibility that we have already entered a catastrophic time, determined by the apparently uncontrollable impact of anthropogenic activities and the incapability of governments and authorities to respond effectively.