Slow Violence: Nixon and environmental justice

Rob Nixon's brand-new book is groundbreaking.  Elsewhere, he writes,

Literary and postcolonial studies have ignored the environmentalism that often only the poor can see

Why does he use the word "violence" to think about environmental problems?

How does he argue that temporality is a crucial lens through which to understand the "environmentalism of the poor"?

What structures prevent us from understanding and seeing environmental injustices over the long-term?

What new ways of understanding environmental problems is Nixon asking us to explore?

Long-lasting effects of the dropping of Agent Orange on Vietnam

"Slow violence" helps us think of externalized costs as a form of violence

Penguins are Good to Think Through

Post your thoughts on Ch. 5 & 7 here!

Why environmental cultural studies is important!

http://features.peta.org/VeggieLove/

Sturgeon's book makes a strong case for the importance of critically examining popular culture for its political implications.  There is no such thing as harmless, innocuous advertising, and the ones that use the ideology of "naturalization" are particularly problematic.  Why?  On what grounds does she make the case that popular culture is so important to examine, and do you agree?  Why are gender, race, and nation important lenses to examine cultural texts that use "nature"?

YOUR TASK:

In your blog, explore any or all of these questions by posting an image or cultural text that you analyze in a Sturgeonian way.  For example, Sturgeon might argue that the "veggie love" PETA advertisement campaign that I posted here trades on sexism to promote vegetarianism, a point that is heightened when we "meat our meat" (a pig) at the end of a series of thumbnail shots of the women we could choose to meet, which likens the women to the pig.  "Helping animals" (an ad inside the ad) seems totally consistent with the kind of objectification of women going on here.  I could unpack this further with closer analysis about the absence of racially non-white women in it...  Or is the whole thing ironic?  See where I'm going?  TRY IT!