You Can’t See Toxics, but You Can Be Very Agitated about Blowing Up

• In Event: Toxic Subjects: Historical, Legal, Occupational, and Medical Perspectives - I

Abstract

South Baltimore has managed risk since the 18th century, from quarantining lepers during America’s great waves of immigration to supporting nuclear deterrence with its Cold War chemical holdings. It’s also the hub of Baltimore’s waste infrastructure and Maryland’s petrochemical industry. These developments have festered for several generations, significantly marring local bodies. But in a context where exposure’s slow violences haven’t provoked state intervention, how have residents drawn attention to their toxic vulnerability? More generally: when invisible exposures fail to stimulate attention, how do those in their throes maneuver tactically?

This paper focuses on a moment at the end of the Cold War when residents successfully negotiated a government buyout of their homes. Their strategy emphasized imminent peril in the event of an industrial accident, rather than the long-term effects of exposure to toxicity. That is, locals cunningly forwarded a chronopolitics of risk focused on the “future possible” at the expense of decrying dispersed suffering. They did so knowing that risk had long been the logic through which potential dangers to collective life had been taken up as political problems—that they satisfied state-centric ways of seeing. Residents also understood the limitations of this strategy. Here, I follow them in attending to temporal disjunctures between the reality of protracted harm and the prospect of spectacular injury, querying why those concerned about toxicity’s cumulative effects nonetheless chose to highlight future vulnerabilities. Along the way, I consider how people navigate a perceptual and political field marked by multiple temporalities of injury.

Author

• Chloe Ahmann, University of Chicago