About this video

• Video Title: Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
• Channel: John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U.
• Speakers: Rob Nixon, Ian Bam
• Duration: 00:38:48

Overview

This video features a lecture by Rob Nixon, the Rachel Carson professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nixon discusses his book "Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor," exploring the concept of "slow violence"—incremental, gradual harm with postponed repercussions—and its representational challenges, particularly in the context of environmental degradation and the rise of environmental justice movements in the Global South.

Key takeaways

• Slow Violence Defined: Violence that is not spectacular or instantaneous but gradual, with calamitous repercussions that unfold over extended time scales.
• Representational Challenges: The difficulty in capturing and conveying the significance of slow, incremental disasters (like climate change, toxic buildup, species loss) in media-driven cultures that favor event-focused, spectacular violence.
• Environmental Justice Movements: The rise of movements in the Global South that seek to address environmental degradation, often led by activists and artists who act as intermediaries between the movement and the public.
• Examples of Slow Violence: The lecture uses examples such as the long-term effects of Agent Orange and depleted uranium in warfare, deforestation and soil erosion in Kenya, and the threat of rising sea levels to the Maldives, to illustrate the concept.
• Reframing Violence and Security: Environmental justice advocates, like Wangari Maathai, reframe issues of environmental degradation as threats to national security, expanding the traditional understanding of defense to include ecological well-being.

Here is the transcript for the video "Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor":

[0:00:01] This is Duke [0:14:20] University so good evening my name is [0:16:27] Ian Bam I'm the director of the Franklin [0:18:54] Humanities Institute and it's my great [0:20:50] pleasure to welcome all of you to um [0:22:76] this year's annual distinguished lecture [0:24:56] in the humanities and in particular to [0:26:48] welcome our speaker Rob Nixon the Rachel [0:29:00] Carson professor of English at the [0:30:43] University of Wisconsin Madison Rob it's [0:32:71] absolutely wonderful to have you here um [0:35:04] this is the 10th year um that the [0:37:00] Franklin Humanities Institute has [0:38:36] organized this lecture um whose purpose [0:40:40] is to invite a leading writer uh or [0:43:64] artist or scholar in the humanities to [0:46:64] Duke to and to ask them to address a [0:49:23] question that cuts across the Humanity's [0:51:87] disciplines um and while engaging [0:54:35] questions that emerge from study [0:56:04] simultaneously engages a fundamental [0:58:34] question attending to the University's [1:00:48] purpose and core Mission across its many [1:03:68] schools institutes and initiatives uh in [1:07:14] previous years our speakers have [1:08:71] included most recently Joan Scott um and [1:11:75] before her Salon rushy Hy Baba Pauline [1:15:75] Yu Anthony apia Isaac Julian mik ball [1:19:79] rila thar and Emory Elliot um Rob it's [1:23:87] an honor to welcome you to that very [1:25:85] distinguished um company of speakers um [1:27:87] I'm particularly pleased that Rob is [1:29:91] joining us this evening as a guest both [1:31:71] of the Franklin Humanities Institute and [1:33:97] of the Nicholas School of the [1:34:84] environment uh the co-sponsor for this [1:37:00] year's talk and I'd like to thank Dean [1:39:00] Bill Chamides I don't know if Bill is [1:40:43] here yet um I know that he will be [1:42:24] joining us um Dean Bill Chides the dean [1:44:36] of the Nicholas school and my colleague [1:46:10] Erica Weinthal from U from Nicholas um [1:48:71] thank you very much for your sponsorship [1:50:43] and for making this occasion possible [1:52:17] for us um we particularly welcome the [1:55:19] co-sponsorship with the Nicholas school [1:57:21] for two reasons um the first is that the [1:59:49] purpose of these lectures is [2:01:27] simultaneously to hear from Scholars [2:04:35] deeply versed within their disciplinary [2:07:13] fields leading figures within those [2:09:35] fields but who in their animation of the [2:12:37] central questions of those disciplinary [2:15:40] domains are simultaneously speaking [2:17:42] across that transdisciplinary form of [2:20:44] knowledge and scholarly engagement upon [2:22:74] which the university prides itself and [2:24:74] that is so Central to the work both of [2:25:49] our Institute uh and the work of [2:27:74] education at the undergraduate and [2:29:51] graduate levels that do [2:30:51] um and um because I can imagine no [2:33:57] scholar um really quite frankly better [2:35:55] equipped to speak about the [2:37:62] intersections of literary study um and [2:40:65] the challenges that environmental [2:42:76] degradation climate crisis threats to [2:45:70] biodiversity um pollution and are [2:47:28] thinking about our being within history [2:50:74] um as environmental um beings within [2:52:74] history I can think of no one better [2:54:74] than Rob Nixon um to address those [2:56:82] issues with us tonight um I also cannot [2:59:18] imagine anyone more perfectly equipped [3:02:18] to offer Rob a proper introduction uh [3:04:84] than my good friend uh and colleague [3:06:91] Erica Weinthal a professor from the [3:08:93] Nicholas School a co-director uh of the [3:11:40] Border Works laboratory at the Franklin [3:13:93] Humanities Institute um and a um key [3:16:40] co-organizer of all of these events so [3:18:80] I'm going to turn the podium over to [3:20:70] Erica to introduce Rob and then we'll [3:21:70] hear from him thank you again for [3:23:70] joining [3:24:79] us so Ian thank you for that generous [3:28:40] introduction and before I introduce um [3:31:11] Rob Nixon tonight I first also want to [3:34:18] express my appreciation to the Franklin [3:36:20] Humanities Institute and especially to [3:38:40] Ian for inviting the Nicholas School of [3:40:22] the environment to co-sponsor this [3:41:84] year's distinguished lecture um this [3:44:27] lecture is just one example of the many [3:46:30] types of collaborations currently [3:48:22] underway between faculty and students [3:50:76] affiliated with both the Franklin [3:52:23] Humanities Institute and the Nicholas [3:53:76] School of the environment and I only [3:56:41] anticipate that we'll have been more and [3:58:41] more and um of collaborations and they [4:01:41] will deepen over the coming years as [4:03:48] such I am deeply honored to be able to [4:06:46] introduce this evening speaker Professor [4:08:48] Rob Nixon Professor Nixon is the Rachel [4:11:25] Carson professor of English at the [4:13:58] University of Wisconsin [4:15:55] Madison he received his PhD from [4:18:71] Columbia University and then taught at [4:20:65] Columbia before moving to [4:22:81] Wisconsin Professor Nixon has long been [4:25:70] recognized as a major literary figure in [4:28:73] postcolonial studies especially for his [4:30:75] early work on VS Nepal and on South [4:33:37] African literature and culture his [4:35:79] memoir Dreambirds marked him out as a [4:37:81] significant scholar who also writes as a [4:39:83] public intellectual and has a broad [4:41:86] audience outside the academy while [4:43:88] Professor Nixon has accumulated many [4:46:30] awards over his career including a [4:48:92] Guggenheim fellowship a MacArthur [4:50:93] Foundation Peace and Security fellowship [4:52:96] and a National Endowment for Humanities [4:53:99] Fellowship he also received the [4:56:00] 2012 Harold and Margaret Sprout award [4:59:03] from the Environmental Studies section [5:00:30] of the International Studies Association [5:01:51] for his recent book Slow Violence and [5:03:76] Environmentalism of the Poor the topic [5:05:75] of his talk this evening this award is [5:07:31] given to a book in the field of the [5:10:31] Environmental Social Sciences often [5:11:61] political scientists that makes a [5:14:18] contribution to both Theory and [5:16:55] interdisciplinarity it was quite fitting [5:18:71] that Professor Nixon received this award [5:21:11] as he is without a doubt a pioneer and [5:23:76] leading Authority in bridging [5:25:79] Environmental Studies and postcolonial [5:27:76] literature [5:29:52] his work on environmentalism and [5:30:75] environmental justice transcends conventional [5:32:70] disciplinary boundaries this scholarship [5:34:77] furthermore has an ability to reach and [5:37:00] influence intellectual thought and [5:40:44] practice across diverse disciplines many [5:42:19] of which are represented in the audience [5:45:70] tonight thus I cannot think of a more [5:47:47] perfect speaker to strengthen the [5:49:52] connective tissue between the Nicholas [5:51:80] School of the environment and the [5:52:68] Franklin Humanities Institute and to [5:54:93] help further interdisciplinary dialogue [5:56:61] in the environmental Humanities at Duke [5:59:40] and Beyond ladies and gentlemen it is [6:01:91] with great enthusiasm that I turn over [6:04:68] the podium to Professor Rob [6:06:68] Nixon thank you Erica and thank you Ian [6:11:71] for that [6:14:74] extraordinarily generous pair of [6:15:77] introductions I can see the connective [6:17:84] tissue um and thanks to the Frankin [6:20:80] Institute and the Nicholas school I had [6:24:00] a wonderful evening last night talking [6:25:72] to some people from the Nicholas school [6:27:27] um and as you know Wisconsin's also a [6:29:77] very dynamic institution in terms of [6:31:80] interdisciplinary environmental work so [6:34:74] it's always a great pleasure to uh ex [6:36:70] change ideas with uh colleagues [6:40:40] particularly at Duke which both in the [6:42:74] humanities and Environmental Studies is [6:45:70] such a world leader in terms of [6:47:71] interdisciplinary um [6:54:14] innovation uh so there's an epigraph to [6:57:21] to my talk today I was listening to the [6:58:71] BBC world Service uh [7:01:42] recently and they were interviewing some [7:03:43] activists uh what had occurred was uh a [7:07:08] a deforestation assault on these [7:08:43] indigenous lands and some of the people [7:10:75] involved in that were killed and one of [7:13:75] the activists who chose to go unnamed on [7:15:75] the [7:17:71] broadcast uh said of uh the his comrades [7:18:84] who had had died he said those people [7:23:00] were dead to the eye before they were [7:25:71] killed those people were dead to the eye [7:28:75] before they were killed and that really [7:31:75] spoke to the heart of so many of the [7:32:80] issues I want to talk to uh talk to you [7:34:56] about [7:37:71] today so in the book Slow Violence and [7:38:80] the Environmentalism the Poor I I really [7:40:75] started out with three uh impulses the [7:42:71] first was to uh unsettle some of the [7:45:71] dominant assumptions about violence what [7:49:18] we think of as violence the second was [7:51:71] to bear witness to the rise of [7:54:81] environmental justice movements in the [7:58:42] Global South and the third and related [8:01:44] concern was to uh honor the writer [8:04:91] activists and AR artist activists who [8:08:49] have sought to operate as go-betweens [8:11:71] the social movement and broader publics [8:15:71] uh and it's often a thankless job in in [8:18:71] many ways I mean uh from martyrdom to [8:20:71] simply being maligned um by by the press [8:25:11] but I I became very fascinated by these [8:29:15] figures who uh are the poor parole the [8:31:71] um the go-between the amplifiers [8:35:19] all's that are often otherwise dismissed [8:39:26] as insignificant and far [8:42:65] away so we're used to thinking of [8:46:52] violence as something explosive and [8:48:76] spectacular as erupting into [8:51:76] concentrated [8:54:35] visibility but we need to think through [8:56:34] I think the the strategic and [8:58:43] representational challenges posed by the [9:00:54] relative invisibility of what are called [9:03:79] slow violence in other words a violence [9:05:71] that is neither spectacular nor [9:07:71] instantaneous but instead is incremental [9:11:71] it's a gradual violence and its [9:13:71] calamitous repercussions are postponed [9:15:71] across a range of time [9:19:71] scales so what I want to do then is [9:22:66] complicate conventional assumptions [9:24:71] about violence as a highly bounded [9:26:71] eruptive act uh highly visible and [9:29:71] newsworthy because it is event focused [9:32:71] targeted at a specific body or bodies [9:36:71] and bounded very clearly in [9:39:71] time so in thinking about the the [9:42:71] temporal dispersion of slow violence uh [9:45:71] this may impact the way we perceive uh [9:48:71] and respond to a number of of social [9:50:71] crises including uh domestic abuse uh [9:53:71] post-traumatic stress but for the [9:56:71] purposes of today's talk I'm going to [9:58:71] focus on specifically on environmental [10:00:71] justice [10:02:60] implications so a major challenge facing [10:06:60] us as environmentalists is how to create [10:09:60] stories and images that can capture the [10:11:71] slow catastrophes of delayed [10:15:71] effects sorry quite [10:20:60] working okay [10:26:29] now this is an image from the [10:29:29] 1940s um and it was put out by a [10:31:75] pesticides corporation that was trying [10:35:75] to promote DDT there was a stockpile DDT [10:36:71] after World War [10:39:71] II uh and what you this is a an image of [10:41:71] the toxic sublime they had got this [10:45:71] model in evident robust good health and [10:48:71] surrounded her with a cloud of DDT [10:51:71] supplied her with a root beer and a hot [10:53:71] dog uh to demonstrate the evidence [10:55:71] safety of of their product okay so it's [10:59:71] a kind of a nimbus of uh DDT that she's [11:02:71] floating on in this context okay so [11:06:71] there are many in such instances where [11:10:71] um industry government and so forth have [11:13:71] tried to um shrink the time frame of the [11:16:71] hazard not always as crudely as that uh [11:21:40] think of the following examples of of [11:25:71] slow violence climate change the Thor [11:26:71] cryosphere the slow toxic drift of [11:29:71] agricultural nitrates down the [11:32:71] Mississippi creating a dead zone larger [11:35:71] than New Jersey in the Gulf if we think [11:36:71] of oil spills [11:41:71] deforestation acidifying ocean [11:43:71] biomagnification all of these are slow [11:47:71] unfolding disasters and they all uh [11:49:71] present formidable representational and [11:52:71] and organizational challenges that can [11:55:71] hinder our efforts [11:58:71] to create stories and images around [11:59:71] which to [12:02:71] mobilize crucially slow violence is not [12:05:71] uh is often not just accumulative but [12:08:71] exponential in other words uh it [12:11:71] operates as a major threat multiplier [12:14:71] and I know Erica and others have have [12:16:71] worked on these these issues of [12:18:71] um uh of of um the exponential effects [12:21:71] of of resource bottlenecks that erupt [12:25:71] from slow [12:26:71] violence different types of disaster are [12:28:71] granted unequal coverage in our mediad [12:31:71] driven [12:32:71] world falling bodies this is not quite [12:35:71] working [12:38:71] sorry falling bodies burning Towers [12:41:71] exploding heads Avalanches volcanoes [12:45:71] tsunamis they all have a visceral page [12:48:71] turning potencies the tales of slow [12:51:71] violence that unfurl over months years [12:54:71] decades even centuries uh cannot match [12:57:71] so these stories of toxic buildup [13:00:71] massing greenhouse gases accelerated [13:03:71] species loss may all be cataclysmic but [13:04:71] they're scientifically convoluted [13:06:71] cataclysm uh and in which the casualties [13:09:71] are postponed often for [13:12:71] generations so crucial question is this [13:14:71] in an age when the media reveres [13:16:71] spectacle and when public policy is [13:18:71] shaped primarily around a perceived [13:20:71] immediate need how in these [13:21:71] circumstances can we convert image and [13:23:71] narrative uh it can convert into image [13:24:71] and narratives disasters that are slow [13:26:71] moving and long in the making disasters [13:28:71] that are anonymous and celebrity [13:30:71] deficient disasters that are gradual and [13:31:71] indifferent of indifferent interest to [13:33:71] the sensation driven technologies of our [13:34:71] media [13:35:71] world how in in other words can we turn [13:36:71] the long emergencies of slow violence [13:39:71] into stories dramatic enough to rouse [13:41:71] public opinion and warrant political [13:44:71] intervention okay so that's a contrast [13:44:71] between the deep water Horizon explosion [13:46:71] and the correx it unfolded into the wave [13:47:71] action in the [13:48:71] Gulf uh we've just seen the 50th [13:51:71] anniversary of Rachel Carson's uh Silent [13:53:71] Spring and to talk about these matters [13:54:71] is to address a subject that she touched [13:56:71] on which is what she called death by indirection [13:58:71] death by indirection I think [14:01:71] it's a very resonant phrase because it [14:03:71] suggests uh oblique death Ricochet death [14:04:71] but also sometimes uh beneath the idea [14:06:71] of indirection Direction [14:07:71] itself uh and her her particular topics uh [14:09:71] that were Central to her writing were [14:11:71] toxic drift and [14:12:71] biomagnification and she remarked how [14:13:71] these processes were formless and [14:14:71] obscure and as a literary critic uh this [14:16:71] was something that particularly [14:17:71] interested me in her writing [14:18:71] approach uh the the way she was trying [14:20:71] to find forms be it elegy apocalypse [14:22:71] pastoral or whatever find forms for the [14:24:71] formless and try to give um a bodily [14:27:71] presence to the the oblique and the [14:28:71] dispersed so I want to ground my [14:31:71] thinking on slow violence with a few [14:33:71] specific examples um one one obvious uh [14:35:71] case is is that of Wars uh whose lethal [14:36:71] repercussions uh are are typically [14:37:71] tidily bookended but seldom uh but [14:39:71] that's seldom the end to the casualty [14:41:71] count in a recent editorial uh in the [14:43:71] New York Times they mentioned [14:45:71] quote uh during our Dozen Years in [14:47:71] Vietnam the US killed 1.5 million people [14:49:71] unquote but that simple word during [14:51:71] shrinks the toll hundreds of thousands [14:53:71] of people survived the War years only to [14:54:71] lose their lives prematurely to agent [14:56:71] orange uh so we 30 more than 30 years [14:58:71] after the last agent orange spraying run [15:01:71] we're having two processes that are [15:02:71] unfolding the unfolding of the [15:03:71] scientific recognition that there [15:04:71] now 17 fatal conditions that are [15:06:71] exacerbated by heightened exposure to [15:07:71] agent orange and secondly the staggered [15:09:71] effects across uh Generations in other [15:11:71] words the genetic um um [15:14:71] carryover of that um in fact just I [15:15:71] think just three years ago the US [15:16:71] Institute of medicine added Parkinson's [15:18:71] disease and eschemic heart disease to uh [15:19:71] fatal conditions that U were were linked [15:21:71] directly to agent [15:23:71] orange so we can see in a case like this [15:24:71] the word during and this is a very [15:26:71] typical way of historicizing War during [15:28:71] uh automatically shrinks uh the the the [15:29:71] toll and so what I'm interested is is is [15:30:71] a kind of contrail of slow violence [15:31:71] finding other ways of thinking and [15:33:71] telling the stories about a kind of [15:34:71] violence that exceeds the that kind of [15:35:71] bracketing slow violence casualties of [15:36:71] are hidden from view even more [15:37:71] dramatically when we turn to the era of [15:39:71] depleted uranium munitions uh which are [15:41:71] first deployed in the 1990 uh Gulf War [15:44:71] depleted uranium possesses a a [15:45:71] durability almost beyond our [15:47:71] comprehension it has a radioactive [15:48:71] halflife of 4.51 billion [15:49:71] years when it enters the environment [15:51:71] depleted uranium effectively does so at [15:54:71] for all time and there has been from [15:56:71] within the Pentagon and and and various [15:58:71] components of the US uh military world [16:00:71] uh quite considerable commentary on this [16:01:71] issue and I just wanted to uh read one [16:03:71] of [16:04:71] these Colonel James Norton uh talking on [16:06:71] the long-term risk we feel we have to [16:08:71] use depleted uranium it's radioactive I [16:09:71] wish it wasn't but I can't change the [16:11:71] laws of physics the issue is once you've [16:12:71] had a hit once you've been involved in [16:14:71] the catastrophic failure of the tank did [16:16:71] the crew survive long enough to really [16:17:71] care whether it was tungsten a a [16:18:71] lethal alternative or depleted uranium [16:21:71] that hit them anyone who does should [16:23:71] count themselves damn lucky I'm sure [16:24:71] every Soldier would thank God that he [16:25:71] lived 40 years to contract [16:27:71] lymphoma so this is a quite a blunt uh [16:28:71] acknowledgment that heat of battle [16:31:71] lethality trumps um the the the the the [16:33:71] violence of deferred [16:34:71] effect so in our age of depleted uranium [16:35:71] warfare we have an ethical obligation to [16:37:71] challenge the military body [16:38:71] counts that consistently underestimate [16:40:71] the true toll of waging such high-tech [16:41:71] wars and the [16:43:71] underestimation um is is typically there [16:45:71] in the advanced planning and in the [16:46:71] retrospective counting [16:47:71] who is counting the staggered deaths [16:49:71] that civilians and soldiers suffer from [16:51:71] ingesting depleted [16:52:71] uranium who is counting the belated [16:54:71] fatalities from unexploded cluster bombs [16:55:71] that over time morph into uh landmines [16:57:71] and lying in wait for months or [16:59:71] years who's counting the deaths from [17:00:71] chemical residues by so-called pinpoint [17:01:71] bombing uh residues that turn into [17:03:71] foreign insurgents infiltrating native [17:04:71] Rivers and poisoning the food chain who [17:06:71] is counting the victims of genetic [17:07:71] deterioration the stillborn malformed [17:09:71] infants uh whose parents DNA had been [17:11:71] scrambled by Wars toxins and we see [17:12:71] these clusters of this in Basra and Fua [17:14:71] in [17:15:71] particular the calculus of any conflict [17:16:71] needs to incorporate such environmental [17:18:71] casualties they may suffer slow [17:19:71] invisible deaths that don't fit the [17:20:71] cycle of CNN or Fox News but they are [17:23:71] War casualties [17:23:71] nonetheless I want to turn out to a [17:25:71] second example A different kind of uh of [17:26:71] struggle against slow violence and this [17:28:71] is evidenced by the uh Kenyan uh Green [17:30:71] Belt movement that some of you may know [17:32:71] of uh led by Wangari Maathai who in 2005 [17:34:71] was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize [17:35:71] together with her movement and basically [17:36:71] under the authoritarian Arab Moy regime [17:38:71] in Kenya uh there was mass massive [17:40:71] deforestation going on and uh result in [17:41:71] soil [17:42:71] erosion so what Wangari Maathai and [17:44:71] several other women did was one I think [17:45:71] 1977 on uh they they decided to form a [17:47:7