Toxic Bios: Toxic Autobiographies—A Public Environmental Humanities Project

Abstract

In this article, we present Toxic Bios, a public environmental humanities (EH) project that aims to coproduce, gather, and make visible stories of contamination and resistance. To explain the rationale of the project and its potentialities, first we offer a brief reflection on the field of the EH and its (possible) contribution to environmental justice research, then, we illustrate the guerrilla narrative strategy experimented through the project.

Political ecology III: Praxis - doing, undoing, and being in radical political ecology research

“…For instance, the Toxic Bios project relies on testimony in what they call “guerilla narratives” of everyday people using affective/emotional political ecology to tell stories of everyday embodied experiences of toxicity, pollution, and wasting. Storytelling is argued to be “a deliberate counter-hegemonic strategy with explicit political aim” (Armiero et al, 2019). As Houston and Vasudevan (2017) demonstrate, storytelling is not just collective capacity building to interpret and chart their own histories but also a reflexive act that connects peoples to wider communities with shared experiences.…”

‘Toxic worldings’: Introduction to toxic flows

“…As political struggles are reconfigured in resistance to toxic exposure or claims for protection, anthropologists may position themselves through engaged, collaborative anthropology (Little 2014), learning new methods from 'civic science' (Fortun & Fortun 2005). This can contribute to our understanding of new political contradictions and alliances beyond the confines of the toxic substances: Chilean 'intimate activism' (Tironi 2018), Italian environmental anti-mafia resistance (Armiero et al 2019) or the struggles of South African miners for improved work conditions (Bolt & Rajak 2016).…”

“…Collaborative anthropological research combining natural science with ethnographic and popular modes of knowing can open up the Pandora's box of toxic evidence beyond notions of 'conclusive evidence' and 'scientific consensus'. In doing so, it positions toxic evidence as a field of social and political struggle within intersections of inequality and differentiation, from toxicological laboratory practice and field research, via regulatory efforts by national governments and international conventions, to mundane bodily experiences and observations and the use of innovative interactive digital tools (Armiero et al 2019;Wylie et al 2017).…”

L’ecologia politica come campo di riconcettualizzazione socio-ambientale: governance, conflitto e produzione di spazi politici

“…Riletture che riconoscono la natura capitalogenica dell'Antropocene e dei paradigmi promossi in questo quadro e che propongono un superamento necessario di tale natura attraverso la promozione di nuove ontologie al fine di ridefinire le relazioni socio-ambientali. È importante poi sottolineare come oggi l'ecologia politica sia in costante dialogo con il quadro più ampio delle Environmental Humanities, emerso nell'ultimo decennio grazie al contributo di varie prospettive critiche delle scienze umane e sociali, nella produzione, promozione e avanzamento di nuove ontologie orientate verso nuovi paradigmi socio-ambientali (Armiero 2019). Di conseguenza, l'ecologia politica, in condivisione con l'ampio contributo delle Environmental Humanities, rappresenta oggi una prospettiva di ricerca fondamentale per analizzare le grandi problematiche del presente come la crisi socio-ambientale e climatica globale, sostenere e rafforzare i nuovi spazi di rivendicazione politica di giustizia e diritto al fine di influenzare e riconfigurare i meccanismi e le visioni della governance ambientale globale.…”