Time-Scapes of Toxicity (1): Making Boundaries

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

How does time play out in toxicity? While ideas of “the Anthropocene” and “slow disaster” urge consideration of hazards along much longer timeframes, the multiplicity and simultaneity of temporal scales—of humans, natures, and materials such as plastics, pesticides, or radiation—complicate the ways actors and researchers comprehend time within and across polluted sites.

Time-scapes connect with land- and socio-scapes. On the one hand, acknowledgment of toxicity develops at different times in different regions, and industries strategically shift extraction and manufacturing to navigate costs and regulation. On the other hand, human actions bring about new openings and closures to toxicity – for instance, when actors reframe asbestos as a present-day environmental hazard, rather than occupational hazard “of the past” to mobilize attention and intervention.

We welcome papers exploring questions such as: Where in time do actors locate risks, and what work does that do? Where are places located in relation to time-scapes of toxins?

In what ways do actors make sense of temporal scales in polluted sites, and work to open and close problems of toxicity? How do temporal boundaries relate to efforts to manage hazards and enact safety? How does temporal locating of risk, shift public priorities or felt experiences of being “at risk” or safe? How do actors and could researchers comprehend a longue durée of hazards?

By asking these questions, this panel contributes to the understanding of transnationality of knowledge production, technological inventions and usages, and regulation and activism about hazards – through thinking across temporal and spatial boundaries.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Time-spaces of toxicity

Chair

• Yeonsil Kang, The Catholic University of Korea

Individual Presentations

• Athwart a Mercurial Ocean: Transnational and Transcorporeal Flows of Methylmercury - Elspeth Probyn, Gender & Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

• Chip, Body, Earth: Toxic Temporalities of Intel Processor Production - Luke Munn, Institute for Culture & Society, Western Sydney University

• Contaminated Insides? Capturing the histories and toxicities of DDT in Africa - Rene Umlauf, Martin-Luther University Halle

• Make it Safe, Make it Past - Britt Dahlberg, Science History Institute

Session Organizers

• Britt Dahlberg, Science History Institute

• Yeonsil Kang, The Catholic University of Korea