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Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

Rob Nixon

4.37 · Rating details · 483 ratings · 52 reviews

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 sensationa ...more

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Hardcover, 353 pages

Published July 14th 2011 by Harvard University Press (first published July 1st 2011)

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May 31, 2012 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: environmental-writings

This book is WOW. This book is yuck.

I already knew fossil fuel companies were slimy and money-hungry, avoiding environmental regulations whenever possible. I knew that the U.S. makes a habit of exporting our dirtiest businesses, and our trash (literally), to poor countries without the political sway to complain about it. I knew that the inhabitants of many small, low-lying islands, who have been faced with the dire consequences of global warming already, have been among the most vocal to speak This book is WOW. This book is yuck.

I already knew fossil fuel companies were slimy and money-hungry, avoiding environmental regulations whenever possible. I knew that the U.S. makes a habit of exporting our dirtiest businesses, and our trash (literally), to poor countries without the political sway to complain about it. I knew that the inhabitants of many small, low-lying islands, who have been faced with the dire consequences of global warming already, have been among the most vocal to speak out about the need for policy change.

Here's what I did not realize.

I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.

I did not realize oil companies have been excited about the new possibilities opened up by global warming, as the arctic continues to melt and make it more practical to start drilling up there. I did not realize the U.S. government was excited to help them expedite this process, by clearing away all the pesky red tape that would keep them from doing so.

I did not realize that it is a cold, hard fact that companies like Chevron spend more money advertising how much they care about alternative fuel sources than they actually spend on developing alternative fuels. Although this isn't too hard to imagine.

I did not realize that, at the same time Barack Obama was gently slapping the hand of B.P. after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he was making sure there was a maximum cap for the cost oil companies would have to pay in the event of a oil disasters in Indian waters, no matter how tremendous the disaster is. The maximum cap? 0.5% of what we expected B.P. to pay when a disaster happened in the U.S.

I did not realize that we only hear about the oil spills that we are expected to be interested in. For instance, we haven't heard much at all about the Exxon disaster's-worth of oil that has been spilled in Nigeria EVERY YEAR, for more than the last thirty years.I would have thought this was newsworthy.

I did not know that, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, B.P. was relying on clean-up methods that were more than forty years old and had been developed for fresh water, because they had never invested in developing clean-up methods since then, or for different ecosystems. I didn't realize that, while B.P. was so clueless about actually cleaning it up, they sent planes out at night to douse the most heavily polluted parts of the water in a chemical that would cause the oil to clump and sink, doing possibly more environmental damage, but making it much harder to determine how large the disaster was.

I really, really wish I didn't have to take this book back to the library tomorrow, so I could write a full review with sources, ala Bird Brian. Instead, You just get to see me in this state of shock as I try to make sense of all this. If you can find a copy of this, I definitely recommend it. ...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Craig Werner rated it really liked it

Shelves: nature, literary-criticism, political-economy

The most important book of literary criticism I've read in five or six years, maybe longer. And a bit disappointing.

I'll start with the positives. Nixon raises an absolutely central question for contemporary writers: how can we develop forms of expression which confront the problem of "slow violence"--primarily the environmental impact of our economic and political and personal actions--in a compelling manner. He's brilliant in framing the problem. Most of our narrative and polemical forms focus The most important book of literary criticism I've read in five or six years, maybe longer. And a bit disappointing.

I'll start with the positives. Nixon raises an absolutely central question for contemporary writers: how can we develop forms of expression which confront the problem of "slow violence"--primarily the environmental impact of our economic and political and personal actions--in a compelling manner. He's brilliant in framing the problem. Most of our narrative and polemical forms focus on spectacular, and usually individual, conflicts. Take three seconds to think about whatever movie's at the top of the box office list or whatever book's at the top of the NYTimes best seller list, and you'll get the point. I'm absolutely convinced that Nixon has asked the right question. It will be a part of how I think about literature from here on out.

Nixon also does a good job with the second part of his title, "the environmentalism of the poor." The take-home message here is that environmentalism isn't just for affluent western liberals; environmental degradation has an even more immediate impact on the lives of the poor, especially in the global South, which has been and is being used as a dumping ground and provider of resources for developed economices with very little attention to either short or long-term effect on the people who live there. Focusing on writers and activists from the global South--Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wangari Maathai,Arundhati Roy, Nadine Gordimer--Nixon argues convincingly that any approach to environmentalism that fails to enter into active dialog and alliance with their movements is both intellectually and politically doomed.

Finally (on the positive side), Nixon raises the question of what the "writer activist" can do to address the title issues. Again, it's the right question, but--and here I'm making the transition to the problems--I wish he'd done more to answer it. While Nixon's previous work as a critic--a terrific study of the Capetown Renaissance, South Africa's rough equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance and a study of V.S. Naipaul--makes it clear that he's got a deep grounding in the thorny questions concerning political literature, not much of that awareness is present here. Specifically, I wanted him to bring the writer-activist issues into conversation with what I'll shorthand as the Brecht-Lukasc debate. The central issue there was whether conventional literary forms (for Lukasc, the Dickensian novel and realistic drama) are capable of communicating politically challenging material in a way that leads to real action. Brecht said no, that what we need are forms which jar viewers out of their comfort zones and force them, often uncomfortably and against their wills. The specifics re. Slow Violence differ, but the question's related: can familiar polemical forms which highlight heroic individual political figures (as is the case with Wangari and Maathai) or op-ed pieces such as Roy's, do more than join in the deafening chorus of opinion which floods our media worlds today? Nixon (whose best book, the marvelous Dreambirds, uses ostriches as a point of entry into a huge range of issues) is fascinated with non-fiction prose forms. I tend to think that fictional narratives--novels, movies, TV mini-series--have a more central role to play in overcoming resistance and denial.

That leads to my final two criticisms or qualifications, both of which have to do with Nixon's text world. First, I would have liked to have seen more attention to Native American and global indigenous literature. The first books I'd use to spark a discussion of how to portray slow violence effectively would be Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and The Almanac of the Dead. Similarly, Nixon pays almost no attention to science fiction, although Indra Sinha's Animal's People shares some aesthetic strategies with, for example, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Doris Lessing's Canopus series (both of which related directly to Nixon's concerns). I don't think it's accidental that Nixon's discussion of the "environmental picaresque" in the chapter on Sinha and the Bhopal catastrophee was the one I'll be coming back to most frequently.

One last quibble. Although Nixon is probably right when he says that literary criticism about environmental issues--ecocriticism to use the argot--has been unremittingly Americanist in its focus, he oversimplifies several of the canonical writers who have been placed at the center of that canon. It may be true that the critics have been parochial and overly invested in the "sublime," but that's not an accurate description of Gary Snyder (who spent a great deal of time in Asia and is in active dialog with Asian environmentalists), Edward Abbey (who's anything but distanced in his take on how we relate to the land). or Terry Tempest Williams who, as a Mormon woman, has emphasized the issues of marginalization of the victims in ways that parallel the writers Nixon justly celebrates.

Finally, although Nixon does a terrific job communicating his ideas to a non-academic audience in public talks and journalistic essays, Slow Violence is a highly academic book. He spends a lot of time orienting his ideas towards contemporary arguments among literary critics. To be frank, I just don't give a damn about the relative prestige of post-colonialists or the theoretical discussion of cosmpolitanism vs. world literature. Some of the issues raised in those debates are interesting and, as SV demonstrates, a few are crucial. But I wish Nixon had written a book I could recommend for my non-academic friends, who on average are far far more aware of the issues he raises than those located within academia.

The fact that I've written what's probably the longest GR review I'm likely to says something about the importance of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. It frames questions and opens doors. It made me re-think my perspective on issues I've thought about a lot. A platform for further work, on the page and in the world. ...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Dan's marked it as to-read

Shelves: enviromental

-Extract froma friend--
Here's what I did not realize.

I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.

I did not realize oil companies -Extract froma friend--
Here's what I did not realize.

I did not realize that, even now, oil companies like Shell literally fund and militarize tyrannical governments that won't hold them accountable for harm to the environment or the people of their country. I did not realize it was so common for them to do this, and then say they had no political sway when the government started literally killing those who start speaking out against the behavior of oil companies.

I did not realize oil companies have been excited about the new possibilities opened up by global warming, as the arctic continues to melt and make it more practical to start drilling up there. I did not realize the U.S. government was excited to help them expedite this process, by clearing away all the pesky red tape that would keep them from doing so.

I did not realize that it is a cold, hard fact that companies like Chevron spend more money advertising how much they care about alternative fuel sources than they actually spend on developing alternative fuels. Although this isn't too hard to imagine.

I did not realize that, at the same time Barack Obama was gently slapping the hand of B.P. after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he was making sure there was a maximum cap for the cost oil companies would have to pay in the event of a oil disasters in Indian waters, no matter how tremendous the disaster is. The maximum cap? 0.5% of what we expected B.P. to pay when a disaster happened in the U.S.

I did not realize that we only hear about the oil spills that we are expected to be interested in. For instance, we haven't heard much at all about the Exxon disaster's-worth of oil that has been spilled in Nigeria EVERY YEAR, for more than the last thirty years.I would have thought this was newsworthy.

I did not know that, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, B.P. was relying on clean-up methods that were more than forty years old and had been developed for fresh water, because they had never invested in developing clean-up methods since then, or for different ecosystems. I didn't realize that, while B.P. was so clueless about actually cleaning it up, they sent planes out at night to douse the most heavily polluted parts of the water in a chemical that would cause the oil to clump and sink, doing possibly more environmental damage, but making it much harder to determine how large the disaster was.

I really, really wish I didn't have to take this book back to the library tomorrow, so I could write a full review with sources, ala Bird Brian. Instead, You just get to see me in this state of shock as I try to make sense of all this. If you can find a copy of this, I definitely recommend it.
...more

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Oct 05, 2020 Zainab rated it it was amazing

One of the most useful academic books I’ve come across so far, so I had to read it in full. Rob Nixon writes in an accessible and, at times, poetic way. The text focuses on the urgent intersection of environment and politics using literary perspectives to anchor each chapter. Running through the book is an eye-opening linguistic analysis, from “precision warfare” to “developmental refugees”, exploring how each phrase and metaphor serves to obscure ecologies of the aftermath. Nixon shows how it’s ...more

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Apr 10, 2021 J rated it really liked it

uhghghgh reading this for my dissertation so can't comment too much but... really good. focussed a lot on how writers can draw attention to environmental crisis, on how they can make slow violence visible! as much a work of literary analysis as of a document of the environmentalism of the poor. ...more

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Mar 11, 2018 Tania Fabo rated it liked it

Shelves: race-and-resistance

A lot of interesting concepts in this novel about the impact of less visible, delayed forms of environmental violence and how they disproportionately affect the POC poor. However, the whole thing read a lot like an ode to the writer-activists, and much like a high school book report at times, which, for me, detracted from the impact of the actual histories. It would have been much more impactful as a detailed chronology of slow violence, perhaps making occasional reference to writers as they rel ...more

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Apr 07, 2018 Mary rated it it was amazing

One of the most important books I've read in a long time. ...more

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Sep 21, 2020 Nils Jepson rated it it was amazing

yeah this book is a revolution in the humanities and i don't think i'm even using that word too lightly despite my drama. the book answers a lot of questions and concerns i had towards both environmental studies and literature, and clarifies and specifies on larger concepts i remembered ("why.we.hate.wilderness.literature!!!!") but forgot, exactly, why we hate wilderness literature. it's also a brave book. it takes a materialist stance towards the humanities, which i think my classes rarely did, yeah this book is a revolution in the humanities and i don't think i'm even using that word too lightly despite my drama. the book answers a lot of questions and concerns i had towards both environmental studies and literature, and clarifies and specifies on larger concepts i remembered ("why.we.hate.wilderness.literature!!!!") but forgot, exactly, why we hate wilderness literature. it's also a brave book. it takes a materialist stance towards the humanities, which i think my classes rarely did, and wades into the bureaucracy, literature of environmental impact reports, financial statement, etc. to both build a broader definition of what literature can be, but also how it's constantly showing up and defining our daily lives. this is what i wrote about the book at 2am a couple days ago:

"Ok why slow violence the book is so cool is that it counters the increased aestheticization of narrative that’s accompanies modernity and the consolidation of the means of production/wealth/resources in a few owners/hands, especially in the arts. If we’re only paying attention to aesthetics, like we’re taught to in typical English literature, what are we missing? Here, we are missing entire unimagined communities, who, through neoliberal globalization, are seen as surplus peoples, unnecessary to productive global “development” and are physically/imaginatively displaced from any type of visible sphere. The only way to pay attention to these folks is to pay attention to how material consolidation has left them poor, broken, oftentimes homeless and voiceless. To help give them voice, we must counter the narrativization of English literature and explore new modes of what literature even means, and what it can do. Aestheticization also only occurs once people think they can live outside, and beyond, their material means and conditions. Once the basic necessities are met. This is why these people control these narratives; they have the time and the resources to. They imagine their world — rarely beyond. The bravery of a book like this is that the outcome of a new sect environmental humanities is no less than a full on, open rebellion against the global neoliberal order and actors like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, Shell, US government, BP etc. The outcomes of a book like this are very material. It’s a discipline of the global underdog; one that has a clear objective and goal (healthy, sustainable, free living for everyone); has a clear enemy (the transnational corporation); and has a clear leader — the third world communities displaced (in place), burdened, dispossessed, left for dead, annihilitated, murdered, executed, imprisoned, encamped and the activist-writers that imagine, and help us, imagine these struggles which are never-ending, continuing, hopefully still fighting against all the odds thrown against them." ...more

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May 20, 2020 Eleri rated it really liked it

Well I may not have bought 100 toilet rolls, but in the week before lockdown started I did raid the university library to stockpile all the books that could conceivably be useful for my essay, just in case it had to close... Now I'm stuck with them indefinitely, I thought I might as well read some of them properly.

This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Although Nixon did define and give examples of this concept of 'slow violence', the book was less about the violence itself and more focused on Well I may not have bought 100 toilet rolls, but in the week before lockdown started I did raid the university library to stockpile all the books that could conceivably be useful for my essay, just in case it had to close... Now I'm stuck with them indefinitely, I thought I might as well read some of them properly.

This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Although Nixon did define and give examples of this concept of 'slow violence', the book was less about the violence itself and more focused on its representation in environmental writer-activism, and the various literary forms this can take. Places the emphasis firmly on the global south and attempts to bridge the divide between postcolonialism and environmental studies, discussing a huge breadth of environmental writing from across the world. Examines the reasons why writing from impoverished communities in the global south whose lives are threatened by environmental slow violence maybe might not *quite* fit the American environmentalist literary mould and tradition of Thoreau etc., and is utterly damning of criticism on that basis. Unflinchingly critical of American foreign policy, and abdication of responsibility by transnational corporations was a recurring theme.

Didn't actually mention the UK all that much, but when he did, there was some switching between English and British where I wasn't totally sure if it was an intentional differentiation, or whether he was reverting to the American tendency to conflate the two (I think Nixon himself isn't American, but he is based and lives in the US). Interesting to find out that the Deepwater Horizon spill apparently inspired a whole load of xenophobic, anti-British sentiment and that Obama took to referring to BP as British Petroleum.

I had to Google a lot of stuff while I was reading this, some of it for background knowledge, but also many, many words I didn't know. Yes it was conceptually quite dense so some very specific vocab was necessary at certain points, but I did find myself rolling my eyes when I got to 'subaqueous' in the epilogue. Ffs just write 'underwater'. ...more

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Jan 28, 2021 Josh rated it really liked it

It is perhaps fitting that it took me a while to read this book. Nixon's prose is slow, at times beautiful, and he writes words that should not be rushed. Essentially the thesis of this book is that environmental disasters and associated violence have persistent impacts on poor and communities of color, but that because of our collective short attention span much of this violence is willfully ignored or discounted. It is a book I have seen referenced a lot and I thought I should read it myself, ...more

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Feb 06, 2019 Eric rated it it was amazing

The brilliance he's able to capture in a single, magnificently jargon-free phrase or sentence....the foresight and skill with which he turns environmentalist attention to time without abandoning either land or marginalized people....the way he makes novels I've never read accessible without resorting in any obvious or heavy-handed way to plot summary. Wow. So good, so provocative, so helpful ...more

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Oct 12, 2020 K.W. Ukuku rated it liked it

This reminded me of that Nate Bargatze stand up bit where Leonardo DiCaprio just tweets out various distressing facts like "Humans are killing sharks at aggressive rates! There will soon be no more sharks if things keep going the way they're going!" and he just has to sit there, reading, with no solution in sight. ...more

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Dec 20, 2021 fiza rated it really liked it

Literally changed my life and the way i view fiction. I’m writing about this for my portfolio on postcolonial ecocriticism and i truly cannot find any flaws within this text. It’s a perfect and a must read

EDIT: yes i know i said there are no flaws but after going over this text again i realised (correct me if i’m wrong) that there is no focus on Native American and indigenous peoples literature. I feel like if you are going to discuss environmental issues, you cannot leave out the global indigen ...more

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Nov 12, 2017 Jay rated it really liked it · review of another edition

useful and instructive for developing a terminology for ongoing ecological disasters and why post-colonialism and environmental studies ought to be more compatible than they heretofore have been. alas, while focusing on the "slow violence" occurring in tandem with a sped up world of briefer attention spans, one notices how much ecological damage has emerged in subsequent years that Nixon could not have foreseen (fracking, Flint, etc) ...more

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Jan 18, 2021 Lisa rated it liked it

Very interesting but I found it hard to follow in some parts sine it talked about other texts that I had not read. It requires a broad personal knowledge to be fully understood.

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Feb 08, 2021 Ryder Kimball rated it it was amazing

Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor is easily one of the more insightful and unique books I’ve read. Rob Nixon opens with a discussion about how climate change and environmental degradation disproportionality inflict a new form of insidious violence on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. However, the book’s focus shifts to the difficulty associated with communicating this slow violence that occurs over large temporal and spatial dimensions. Nixon, a professor in Human Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor is easily one of the more insightful and unique books I’ve read. Rob Nixon opens with a discussion about how climate change and environmental degradation disproportionality inflict a new form of insidious violence on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. However, the book’s focus shifts to the difficulty associated with communicating this slow violence that occurs over large temporal and spatial dimensions. Nixon, a professor in Humanities and the Environment, questions how artists can “devise arresting stories, images, and symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects.” To this degree, Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor engages with this subject within a literary framework. Nixon discusses environmental justice by placing writer-activists from affected areas in the global South at the forefront of the book’s focus. It’s a compelling method of addressing the egregious behavior of oil companies and certain countries (operating under postcolonial and neoliberal creeds) while highlighting the necessity of broadening the scope of voices within this field. Besides his innovative literary approach, Nixon’s writing is accessible and refreshing. It took me longer than normal to read simply because I spent so much time collecting quotes and passages. The goal of this book is ambitious, and although some questions remain unanswered, it’s a mandatory read for those interested in environmental justice.

“By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.”

“Both Carson and Sinha give the absence wrought by toxicity a sensory density; in so doing they strike a complex temporal note, through blended elegy and apocalypse, lamentation and premonition, inducing in us a double gaze backward in time to loss and forward to yet unrealized threats. Through this double gaze they restage environmental time, asserting its broad parameters against the myopic, fevered immediacy that governs the society of the catastrophe-as-spectacle.” ...more

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Aug 14, 2018 Adrik rated it it was amazing

This text was a revelation for me. The author, Rob Nixon, offers insight into how we are slowly damaging our earth, through what he calls slow violence, a process that is continuous but since it is not of the attention grabbing kind, one that goes unnoticed. The book reads well but is a tough read as he reveals a mix of greed and complacency as the cause for the state of our climate today. However, I feel this book is important to read as it gives us the terminology to discuss these issues as we ...more

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Mar 02, 2021 Blake Neumann rated it it was amazing

Really impactful text but I remember when reading it I felt that it was difficult to cut through the dense language and feeling that it was made slightly unapproachable because of this. Definitely geared towards a more academic audience, but extremely illuminating and Nixon is so elegant about the way he connects such seemingly disparate concepts.

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Jul 14, 2021 Daniella Auerbach rated it really liked it

Stellar contribution to eco criticism. Rob Nixon’s discussion of climate change as a slow and dangerous violence is excellent. The inclusion of writer-activists who demonstrate the environmental challenges for the poor in the global South was the perfect way to visualize and ground the major issues. Fantastic read but definitely a dense one that is at times difficult to understand.

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Feb 17, 2022 kat rated it it was amazing

the lure of nostalgia and sublime aesthetics for white american environmentalists is a palpable force. this book was absolutely incredible, difficult to read but beautifully written, and nixon's narratological dialogism of transnational environmentalism was singlehandedly some of the most fascinating theory i've ever read. ...more

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Jul 15, 2018 Kidada rated it it was amazing

In its capacity to make legible the experienced slow moving environmental horrors of public policy re: public works programs, infrastructure, and of war, Slow Violence is a devastating but must-read text.

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Jun 21, 2019 Liam Govey rated it it was amazing

Currently researching on Nigerian oil for my dissertation (in relation to the works of Ben Okri), and I have to say this book is eye-opening in every sense. Anyone interested in environmental studies or ecocriticism, or even just the state of the planet absolutely must read this book.

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Jan 25, 2020 Rhys rated it liked it

The 'uneventful violence' that is diffused and defused as a result of its slowness to draw our attention and hold it. Slow Violence makes some interesting connections between literary studies, poverty, (post)colonialism, and environmentalism. ...more

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Aug 06, 2020 Clark rated it it was amazing

It took a little for me to get into this book but once I did, I found it to be fascinating. Then again, I’m immensely interested in environmental rhetoric. This book left me with much to read and think about.

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Jun 06, 2017 Margi Prideaux rated it it was amazing

Well researched, well written. Strong stuff. A brilliant book.

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Nov 15, 2018 Line Breistrand rated it it was amazing

A fantastic read

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Feb 08, 2019 Ian rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-for-my-mfa

The Introduction goes incredibly hard.

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May 27, 2019 Sydney Bollinger rated it it was amazing

Shelves: eco-writing-climate-fiction

necessary

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Dec 07, 2020 Hanneke rated it liked it

Important book that has made great impact conceptually in Literary and Cultural Studies, but it also stays at a bit of a distance of what it says it will research: the environmentalism of the poor.

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Mar 14, 2021 Sarah Giragosian rated it it was amazing

One of the most important contributions to eco criticism that I have ever read.

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“Ours is an age of onrushing turbo-capitalism, wherein the present feels more abbreviated than it used to be – at least for the world's privileged classes who live surrounded by technological time-savers that often compound the sensation of not having enough time. Consequently, one of the most pressing challenges of our age is how to adjust rapidly eroding attention spans to the slow erosions of environmental justice. If, under neoliberalism, the gulf between the enclaved rich and outcast poor has become ever more pronounced, ours is also an era of enclaved time wherein for many speed has become self-justifying, propulsive ethic that renders "uneventful" violence (to those who live remote from its attritional lethality) a weak claimant on our time. The attosecond pace of our age, with its restless technologies of infinite promise and infinite disappointment, prompts us to keep flicking and clicking distractedly in an insatiable –often insensate– quest for quicker sensation".” — 5 likes

“It is a pervasive condition of empires that they affect great swathes of the planet without the empire's populace being aware of that impact - indeed without being aware that many of the affected places even exist. How many Americans are aware of the continuing socio environmental fallout from U.S. militarism and foreign policy decisions made three or four decades ago in, say, Angola or Laos? How many could even place those nation-states on a map?” — 3 likes

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