Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor / Rob Nixon.

ISBN:

9780674061194

Title:

Author:

Nixon, Rob, 1954- author.

Personal Author:

Nixon, Rob, 1954- author.

Publication Information:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2011.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 353 pages) : illustrations

General Note:

"To view this image, refer to the print version of the title"--Text in place of all illustrations (JSTOR platform, viewed April 17, 2017).

Contents:

Slow violence, neoliberalism and the environmental picaresque -- Fast forward fossil: petro-despotism and the resource curse -- Pipedreams: Ken Saro-Wiwa, environmental justice, and micro-minority rights -- Slow violence, gender and the environmentalism of the poor -- Unimagined communities : megadams, monumental modernity, and developmental refugees -- Strangers in the eco-village: race, tourism, and environmental time -- Ecologies of the aftermath: precision warfare and slow violence -- Environmentalism, postcolonialism, and American studies -- Scenes from the seabed and the future of dissent.

Subject Term:

Commonwealth literature (English) -- History and criticism.

American literature -- History and criticism.

Ecology in literature.

Environmentalism in literature.

Human ecology in literature.

Postcolonialism in literature.

Colonies in literature.

Ecocriticism.

Human security.

Poor -- Developing countries.

Imperialism -- Environmental aspects.

Globalization -- Environmental aspects.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view
Click here to view

Publication Date:

2011

Publication Information:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2011.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
820.936 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"Groundbreaking in its call to reconsider our approach to the slow rhythm of time in the very concrete realms of environmental health and social justice." --Wold Literature Today

The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode.

In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Author Notes

Nixon Rob :

Rob Nixon is Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his many books is Dreambirds: The Natural History of a Fantasy. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times .

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Scholarly, activist, journalistic, environmental, and postcolonial goals converge in this well-written appeal to the academy to unite in the pursuit of global environmental justice. Looking at literature about the environment of the poor, Nixon (English, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) provides scholarly insights on heterogeneous texts that reveal and protest the oppression and subjugation of life and the environment under colonial culture and politics: Wangari Maathai's Unbowed (2006), a memoir of her life, politics, and environmental activism with the Green Belt Movement in Kenya; Ken Saro-Wiwa's Nigerian detention diary A Month and a Day (1995); Abdelrahman Munif's novel Cities of Salt (Eng. tr., 1987), which is set in 1930s Persia. Nixon's urgency heightens when he looks at glaring "lethal repercussions" of slow violence and their silent "sprawl across space and time.. Merging ecocriticism, environmentalism, and postcolonialism, Nixon intends this book to offset continuing neoliberal marginalization and strengthen activist bonds between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. This passionate presentation of protest literature exposes the ubiquity of colonial ecologies present and past and joins the new wave of ecocritical studies that eschew some of the American origins of the genre (cf. Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment, ed. by Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George Handley, CH, Oct'11, 49-0691). Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. L. L. Johnson Lewis & Clark College