Denaturalizing Disaster: Petrochemical Predicaments

• In Event: Residues: Rethinking Chemical Environments - I

Abstract

Examining the use and effects of industrial chemicals as inherently political, this chapter
considers how the detrimental effects of toxic chemicals shape our understanding of what
constitutes disaster, even as they degrade the biosphere and imperil its inhabitants.
Drawing out the entanglements of the petrochemical industry in relation to fossil-fuel
development and agricultural pesticides, we trace the simultaneous compulsion for
capital accumulation alongside necro-political effects. While environmental scholars and
activists have revealed wanton (ab)use of toxic chemicals, and the acute impacts thereof,
we argue that profligate use of petrochemicals and the legitimizing discourses and
regulatory structures that enable it ought to be understood as disastrous. Our analysis
aims to unmask the normalization of disaster and explores how some seeming ‘natural’
disasters are tied into the proliferation of petrochemicals— in which an entire, inherited
way of life is implicated—carries with it an uncertain, turbulent, and unjust future. We
conclude that making explicit the structural relations between government, discourses,
and the petrochemical industry, which sustain a material-consumptive way that deepens
socio-environmental disasters, requires a historical course-shift in understanding disasters.

Authors

• Jennifer Leigh Lawrence, Virginia Tech | Global Forum for Urban & Regional Resilience

• Laura Lane, Virginia Tech