Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Boxes
- About the Authors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Beyond Modern Environmentalism
- 2 Suburb, Field, Laboratory: Recomposing Geographies of Early Environmentalism
- First Interlude: Green and White Dreams
- 3 Revolt Against One-Worldism: Radical Claims on Land and Work Post-1968
- Second Interlude: Planetary Icons
- 4 The Right to Subsist: Transnational Commons Against the Enclosure of Environments and Environmentalism
- Third Interlude: Witnessing in the Global Resonance Machine
- 5 Earth Politics: Disagreement and Emergent Indigeneity in the So-Called Anthropocene
- Fourth Interlude: Making Things Resonate
- 6 Conclusion: Resonance Beyond Environmentalism
- Coda: Afterlives
- Notes
- References
- Index
First Interlude: Green and White Dreams
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Boxes
- About the Authors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Beyond Modern Environmentalism
- 2 Suburb, Field, Laboratory: Recomposing Geographies of Early Environmentalism
- First Interlude: Green and White Dreams
- 3 Revolt Against One-Worldism: Radical Claims on Land and Work Post-1968
- Second Interlude: Planetary Icons
- 4 The Right to Subsist: Transnational Commons Against the Enclosure of Environments and Environmentalism
- Third Interlude: Witnessing in the Global Resonance Machine
- 5 Earth Politics: Disagreement and Emergent Indigeneity in the So-Called Anthropocene
- Fourth Interlude: Making Things Resonate
- 6 Conclusion: Resonance Beyond Environmentalism
- Coda: Afterlives
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
A blank canvas and a green rugged field
Lined with a white picket fence,
Only a little ground to clear to make it ready,
This is the American Earth!
The great hand of Union Carbide
Erects a great wall, a dividing-line
Between the past and the rocket-fuelled future
The white worker and his white wife
Stand by: We are on our way to freedom
They say, pointing ahead, where
Two roads diverge – one a highway,
The other, a low road.
Dupont and his cellophane baby
Wave beside Shell-powered engines
Blessing the way to the countryside:
Ours. Just don't look out the window, kids!
Those people with placards,
Those people falling in the fields –
They are not with us.
In this Interlude, we juxtapose images that circulated around the production of plastics, petroleum and chemicals during the 1950s and 1960s, in connection with new dreams of progress. With a focus on companies and chemicals linked with the UK and US, we have chosen images that connect histories and geographies of war, imperialism, and race, with ideologies of progress, hygiene and the countryside. Alongside these visual stories we place records of protests that erupted – often decades later, when toxic effects on bodies and landscapes had become clearer – in relation to hidden aspects of these same images. The toxic effects of waste incineration in the making of plastics; the effect of Agent Orange – the chemical used in new weapons during the Vietnam War – in the soil on bodies; the effects of DDT on ecologies; the effects of war on communities: new forms of aesthetics emerge to denounce such effects and render them perceptible to a global audience.
DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly known as DuPont, was founded as a gunpowder manufacturer in 1802 by E.I. Du Pont. Before merging with Dow Chemical in 2017, DuPont was the world's largest chemical company in terms of sales.
Cellophane was invented in 1912 but became widespread after DuPont developed a moisture-proof version in 1927. In the 1950s, DuPont grew their business through the mass production of Cellophane and another well-known synthetic material: Teflon. Both products are built out of a group of at least 4,700 synthetic chemicals called PFAs, short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which make surfaces resist stains, water and grease.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- All We Want Is the EarthLand, Labour and Movements beyond Environmentalism, pp. 44 - 53Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023