Moral Economies of Life and Death: Agricultural Improvement, Imperialism, and Chemical Kinships with Reactive Nitrogen

Abstract

What does it mean to think of chemicals as kin? Building on the concepts of chemical kinships and pollution as colonialism, I use a feminist storytelling methodology grounded in relational ontology to explore my kinship relationships with reactive nitrogen, and the way it both hurts me and gives me life. Agriculture and organic chemistry are close kin to imperialism, capitalism, and environmental destruction, and, as a white British woman, I argue these are also my own more-than-human family: my close kin. To take the call to kinship seriously, I argue for approaching kinship personally, and accepting clear positionality in relation: exploring my relation to how these kin both abuse and support me, our ancestral entanglement, and my own complicity and responsibility in enabling their abuse.