Rob Nixon and his book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor provided me with a world of new information and insightful connections that really shaped my thinking about the world, specifically the importance of discussion and interaction between diverse fields of study in Environmental Humanities. As a person who enjoys studying both science and the humanities, I think having a diversity of knowledge is always important and this reading reinforced my idea of the importance of interdisciplinary study, research, and communication. In preface of the book he sites and connects the ideas of three prominent figures from different fields of academia.
First he discusses Edward Said, a professor of literature, who discusses world literature and politics, political idealism and the distribution of information. Distribution of information is how knowledge is divulged and disseminated by the rich and privileged, such as the government and monopolies, to the public. In the modern neoliberal era, hoarding knowledge and information is equivalent to hoarding natural resources and money. In addition, not sharing information could lead to information being entirely geographically-based and therefore not available to the entire world. This may lead to large scale misinformation and isolation, where “alternative communities all across the world, informed by alternate information, [are] keenly aware of environmental human rights and libertarian impulse that binds us together in this tiny planet” (Nixon X).
Nixon next considers Rachel Carson, a science writer who discusses the military industrial complex, socio-environmentalism, and environmentalism of the poor. Nixon explains that she emphasizes the problems of compartmentalizing expertise and information, bloated corporate funding and the privileged feigning objectivity and interest in humanitarian efforts.
Finally Nixon examines Ramachandra Guha a sociologist. He explains how Guha focuses on how environmentalism is connected to global distribution of justice, militarization and unequal rates of consumption. Guha also strongly rejects the ideas of sentimentalizing “traditional” cultures and ecology, as he thinks ecology is a rather stagnant field of study because it does not properly consider sociopolitical factors.
In the introduction to his book, Rob Nixon discusses a multitude of different ideas and examples to really describe the idea of slow violence. The first example that really reached me was the dumping of chemical, nuclear, and other hazardous waste to Africa by first-world countries to appease their own environmentalism. This idea was advocated by Lawrence Summers, the president of the World Bank who thought it would “help correct an inefficient global imbalance in toxicity” (Nixon 1). The idea that you can balance “toxicity” in the world by sending it somewhere else, rather than reducing output or making less toxic, is obviously absurd and self-serving. In addition to decimating these lands for natural resources, both in the past and present, we are now sending them toxic materials that we have no real idea how to manage. This will lead to a world wrought with irreversible environmental, social, political and economic calamity.
Nixon describes slow violence as “gradual, out of sight, delayed destruction across space and time” and also as “neither spectacular or instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive” by giving examples like climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, acidifying oceans, and the aftermath of war. The average person, sadly myself before this class, considers these topics every now and then, when the media deems it devastatingly interesting enough. We always learn that they have been occurring for a constantly and for a long time and now it is too late to actually help. When I heard these environmental tragedies listed one after another and how they are all examples of slow violence, it dawned on me how they are all connected in a horrible ways. Nixon explains how the media and public only respond to sensational and visceral events and they ignore the ones that you cannot see or feel. This made me immediately think of distribution of information because if the rich and privileged control the media and information they control what the public understands and how they feel. This creates a public that merely respond to tragedy as inevitable because they are fed regulated information, which Edward Said deems aptly as “the normalized quiet of unseen power” (Nixon 6). This really made me think about how social media and the internet almost seem to promote this concept by the mindless “retweeting” and “liking” of other people’s ideas. This creates a culture of using and promoting media-approved information, rather than researching your own information and sharing your own ideas. Although promoting and disseminating information is an invaluable part of academia and the media, it must be done with diligence and integrity and be available to all people. Otherwise environmental problems, along with a slew of other problems, will never be properly considered and solved.
Although it has nothing to do with the environment or nuclear futures, the concept of slow violence has always made me think of the issue of concussions and CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in sports. I enjoy sports and frequently watch the ESPN channel on television. A topic that always arises every football season is CTE and how it affects so many former athletes. Recent research shows that multiple and consecutive concussions slowly damage the brain beyond repair and that it can start early as little league tackle football. The result has been an increase in funding for research and a lot of former athletes donating their brain to science. Tragically Dave Duerson, a former professional football player, ended up shooting himself in the chest so his brain could be donated and researched for CTE and other brain injuries. The result of this information has also led to a decreased participation in little league tackle football and many former and current professional football players saying they would not allow their kids to participate in tackle football at a young age. This damage is slowly accumulating, the results of the tackles aren’t as gruesome as broken limbs, and can only be seen until the damage is beyond repair. This is a version of slow violence would rarely be considered because CTE of athletes is outside the scope of conventional academia. Consequently those who know of the CTE problem would not have much of an opportunity to hear about a term like slow violence because it is a term used mostly in environmental-related areas of study. This damage is eerily similar to nuclear radiation, it is slow, invisible and irreversible. The only way to ease this damage is to prevent it from happening. Like the nuclear industry, football and other sports have monopolized regulations that favor monetary gain over proper safety. The public has begun to see the problems in both of these industries and many are advocating overhauling changes to both. Only time will tell if this will lead to safer regulations and practices in either sports or the nuclear industry.
Related articles:
Decreased Participation in Youth Football
CTE Found in Nearly All of the Brains Donated by NFL Players
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/25/539198429/study-cte-found-in-nearly-all-donated-nfl-player-brains