Slow Violence

Environmental Slow Violence

Nixon delves more in depth about a specific type of slow violence that poses a threat to our modern society, environmental slow violence. "Climate change, the thawing cryosphere, toxic drift, biomagnification, deforestation, the

radioactive aftermaths of wars, acidifying oceans, and a host of other slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present formidable representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to mobilize and act decisively" (Nixon, 2011) However, while negative effects from polluting in the environment have been observed, not much change has been enacted to reverse these disturbances in our ecosystems because the communities that are most affected are populations that are seen as "less important" due to their social standings in society.

Structural Violence

Why is it that the needs of some populations are seen as more important than others, even when certain populations are living in a dangerous and possibly lethal environment? Johan Galtung introduces the concept of structural violence to answer this question, "There may not be any person who directly harms another person in the structure. The violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances." (Galtung, 1969) We can see this concept show up throughout history in the forms of racism and socioeconomic class. Groups of people who have been marginalized by the government and by the legal system into believing that their lives and needs are not as important as others. The reason environmental slow violence is often ignored is because it usually only effects groups of people who are battling against structural violence, "Scholars and activists have repeatedly demonstrated that the geography of toxicity is closely bound to the location of minority and low income communities."(Davies, 2019) The problem isn't that the effects of pollution and climate change aren't visible and harming populations, but unfortunately the people who are suffering the consequences are ignored, overlooked, and left to fend for themselves.

Cancer Alley

In his essay about slow violence and toxic geographies, Thom Davies visits a settlement of Freetown, a place surrounded by numerous oil refineries and other chemical plants, called Cancer Alley. Through his discussions with the citizens of this settlement, some who have been there since the 1800's, he is able to hear first hand about the impact that pollution has had on the lives and ecosystems of the people who live there. Despite the numerous detrimental health effects that have been plaguing this community, nothing has been done about it due to the fact, the people who occupy this settlement are victims of structural violence, "The path of least resistance has meant the toxics are placed near poor and black communities; lives that seemed less worthy of protection."(Davies, 2019) These "disposable" (Nixon, 2011) communities of minorities have been left to the mercy of the toxic chemicals that leech into their soils and air while those who have been deemed worthy of protection have been removed from the dangerous environment, "Comments made by African-American participants I interviewed, who described white residents being "bought out" by the neighboring petrochemical companies, while black residents were left in place." (Davies, 2019) Through Davies use of interviews from people with first hand accounts of the discrimination and effects the pollution have had on their health and the environment around them, it allows us as readers to realize that the impacts of slow violence and structural violence are already beginning to catch up with us. While in this moment the effects might only be felt by a select amount of people, change needs to be immediate before it's too late to reverse widespread damages.

Caption: A color coded map to depict the percent of populations in different towns that are predominantly African American and where the placement of industrial sites are in relation to these settlements

Image Citation: (Stepniak, 2015)

Structural Violence within Tentacle

Through the use of time-jumping, Indiana is able to emphasize the structural violence that is not only at play in the future, but also in the present times. Indiana emphasizes the structural violence through her accurate representation on racial discrimination and inequality, "The dirty work, of course, had fallen to the black guy. "Black," he heard himself say as he breathed smoke out of his mouth. A small word swollen over time by other meanings, all of them hateful. Every time somebody said it to mean poor, dirty, inferior, or criminal, the word grew;" (Indiana, 112) This quote is a reflection of the present day mindset about race, and due to structural violence specific races have over time been associated with many negative connotations and prejudices that are immediately associated with a person simply due to the color of their skin. When Indiana talks about race in the future, we can see how this prejudice has grown into something more, a indifference to the lives and well-being of the people who are seen as "disposable" (Nixon, 2011), "Recognizing the virus in the black man, the security mechanism in the tower releases a lethal gas and simultaneously informs the neighbors, who will not avoid the building's entrance until the automatic collectors patrolling the streets and avenues pick up the body and disintegrate it." (Indiana, 1) This excerpt depicts to us how this prejudice will continue to grow unless we as a society do something about it, Acilde, our main character, no longer even flinches taking the life of the Haitian man because the social norms have made this an acceptable practice. Their lives are viewed as trash for the collectors to remove from the streets as if their lives meant nothing. While there is no way of knowing whether this exact scenario will occur in the future, Indiana encourages the reader to take a minute and think about our current trajectory as a society concerning the way we treat marginalized populations.

Caption: Recent protests have been objecting to the structural violence within our society and demanding for equal treatment of all races.

Image Citation: (Higginbotham, 2020)

Environmental Slow Violence within Tentacle

While Indiana brings awareness to the structural violence in society, she also emphasizes the slow violence that is occurring in our environment. In this future utopian novel, marine life is nonexistent, "marine creatures, a luxury coveted by wealthy collectors now that the three disasters had finished off practically every living thing under the sea." (Indiana, 12) This quote from the world Indiana has imagined, warns us about a future that could occur if we keep living and polluting the way we are now. If we continue valuing oil production, overfishing, and petrochemical plants over ecosystems, we will be left without resources that are crucial to the survival and prosperity of our society. Slow violence has effects that can't always be seen in the present, but can have irreversible consequences, Indiana writes about practices that are completely common in our present society, "In the Gulf of Mexico she’d (Linda) seen with her own eyes what the nets brought up after shaving the marine floor for miles at a time. Once they had removed everything useful, they’d toss thousands of dead fish too small to be consumed, dolphins, tortoises, and enough coral to build a castle back into the sea, all products of the demolition of an ecosystem, that had no resources left to regenerate.” (Indiana, 94) Due to the lack of regeneration, thousands of ecosystems are displaced and left to die. Indiana means to call attention to changes that need to occur if we want to avoid the future that she has predicted. These actions of the fishermen, which are not fantasy but actually occur in our modern world make the reader reflect on the way things are going right now and how devastating the consequences of ignoring the problem can be. While some organizations do care about climate change, and it is an issue that is widely discussed, there is a lot of incorrect and mixed information out there about the effects its having on Earth, and how it will affect our society. By presenting such a harsh view of what the future would look like, Indiana prompts the readers to realize that the changing of the ocean will also affect society and the economy if we don’t begin to make a change.

Image Citation (Irving, 2018)

Image Citation (Smithsonian, Healthy Coral Reef)

Caption: Recent changes and deaths in coral ecosystems since coral is unable to regenerate on it's own.

Increasing Awareness

The manner in which an author narrates and presents a story has a great impact on how it is perceived and understood by the reader. Davies' essay is based upon facts, however through his use of quotes from his numerous interviews with the affected populations, he forces empathy from the readers as they learn about a life that they might have never imagined was occurring in the United States, a place where people knew if they stayed where they were, negative heath effects at the hands of the pollution were unavoidable. No one wants to believe that this is the sort of life anyone should have to endure, to constantly live in hazardous environments knowing it will be the death of them, but not given the opportunity to create a new life.

While Indiana's book is a work of fiction, by being factual in her description of the present and the past, the future dystopian world she creates, with its pollution barren ocean-scape and severe poverty among the marginalized populations, seems more realistic to us as readers. Reading about a fantasy future where marine life rare and killing refugees is common practice it forces us to rethink the violent yet normalized practices of our modern society and bring awareness to the future that awaits us if we don't begin to alter our values as a society.

Whether an essay or a work of fiction, literature has the unique ability to inform and inspire their readers to make a positive change in the world to help end slow violence.

Why did you choose to do a multimodal project? What do you think is particularly effective about this form?

The reason I chose to do a multimodial project was because I felt the the concept and topic of my final was too complex to be laid out in a typical essay format. I find that in essay format, some concepts, ideas, and quotes are lost to the reader when all of the information is provided in one space. Prezi allows for the author to direct the flow of information and section it off in a way that allows the audience to really have the time to focus in on each section and feel its impact before moving on to the next so no topic, evidence, or quote is overlooked. While this did break up my analysis a bit I think I was able to tie it all together and then back to my thesis in my conclusion bubble.

I also felt that in typical essay format, it is extremely hard to incorporate other types of media, such as pictures. Through the use of a Prezi I was able to connect each idea to a set of images that I felt helped the analysis of the different literature fully resonate with the reader.

What did the process of producing this project illuminate about the challenges, possibilities, and responsibilities of representing a complex topic?

I think that the hardest part of producing a multimodial project was the format and layout of my presentation. Since all the content is separated out into different sections, it was challenging to find a flow of content that was easy to follow and logically made sense to the reader. I think that by beginning with definitions of the concepts I would be exploring in the two textual examples I was using was very helpful to connect the two works of literature that I was analyzing throughout. Slow violence is a very complex concept that may be hard to grasp how it is represented in literature. I think that deciding which quotes to use in the analysis was difficult because I didn’t want to use too many, however there were so many that I felt perfectly captured the point that I was trying to make so it was difficult to decide which ones to incorporate and which ones could be left out. On that same subject, having such a complex topic such as slow violence in literature, I felt that there was an overwhelming amount of sources that could have been used to support my thesis, so another challenge was decicin not only which were the best but also which ones connected to the ideas of each other so that literally analysis made more sense.

Who do you envision as the audience for this project, and what do you hope they’ll come away with?

I imagine my Prezi reaching a few different audiences. I think that the literary analysis aspect, emphasizing how change can be activated through the use of different writing styles, as well as people who want to learn about ecological and structural violence. I think that these two different groups of people would deeply benefit from this presentation because together they can contribute to the change I would like to see enacted in this generation. I hope that they will come away with a greater knowledge about slow and structural violence as well as a drive and purpose to make change in order to reverse the negative effects I describe in my presentation that we see slowly changing our world.