Monthly Archives: September 2023

Theresa Chen – Blog #1

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Using Nixon’s writing “Slow Violence”, it allows a different perspective for what meaning violence may hold. Before reading this I never categorized the word violence with anything in front of it. I interpreted slow violence as an event that is happening, but it happens almost secretly. You won’t know it’s happening till it’s almost too late. When Nixon brought up how people who lack resources are those who are most threatened by slow violence I agreed with this thought. When you look at the world we live in, what comes to everyone’s phones first? What magazines do companies like TMZ, People Magazine, or New York Times Magazine like to slap on the cover? You won’t ever see anything about the poor housing conditions people live in, the struggles of getting health care without insurance, and unhealthy living. The list goes on. Because this isn’t “glamorized”, and this is out of sight. As Nixon said “By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight”.

When Nixon used the example of domestic abuse, where he said “violence may be life threatening but slow, bloodless, and brutal in ways that are not always immediately fatal”. Domestic abuse isn’t always caught or some people don’t even realize it. When it comes to climate change we all know about it but we don’t see the immediate impact of it. He talks about the struggle for writers to write about climate change, “slow-acting violence that, like climate change, pose formidable imaginative difficulties for writers and activists alike.” Even when National Academy of Sciences told president George W. Bush humans were causing the earth to warm up, it was overlooked. Now in the present day our Earth has warmed up to a point of no return. When we knew this was slowly occurring throughout the years. Writers struggle to write about climate change because it’s not a concern too many people right now. “The representational challenges are acute, requiring creative ways of drawing public attention to catastrophic acts that are low in instant spectacle but high in long-term effects.” We depend on the creative ways to grasp the attention of the readers but to also execute the message properly. The argument that we have to find a way to draw out these problems and make it visible to people.  The layer to slow violence is that it needs to be shown. With climate change people need to be exposed to the problem, to understand and pass it onto others. 

To me this is what’s scary about slow violence, you don’t see it. I feel like this generation we are all guilty of having this blind eye or unawareness to problems that will have an impact on us when we are older. Just because the problem isn’t immediate and present now. Doesn’t mean it won’t hit us when it’s time. The way we get distracted by the media, and the lack of knowledge with certain problems. It makes me wonder how much of the problems we face day to day could’ve been avoided and what we will have to deal with later on due to slow violence.

Ember Ortiz BLOG #1

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          The excerpt from Nixon’s Death in the Anthropocene explores the concept of how slow violence, which refers to a type of violence that occurs gradually over time, is often overlooked or ignored due to its lack of immediate spectacle. The excerpt also explores the environmentalism of the poor and the ways in which imaginative writing and rhetorical strategies can help raise awareness about environmental injustices. Nixon weirdly employs a slow and gradual writing style to mirror the gradual and often unnoticed nature of slow violence itself. This in return can cause the readers to have a sense of unease and discomfort; the deliberate pacing and careful attention to detail force readers to slow down and pay closer attention to the narrative. Interestingly, the deliberate writing style also serves to amplify the impact of slow violence itself, allowing readers to experience the slow unfolding of events in a way that mirrors the insidious nature of slow violence.  Not only is Nixon embodying what he’s rhetorically conveying, but what we have here is an indirect psychological effect on the readers, where they are the subjects to a proposition made by the same author AND experience the effects of the enduring issue being mentioned.

          Nixon explains that novels and other forms of imaginative writing can be an important influence in raising awareness about climate change and environmental issues. According to him, such writing can provide “scientific and imaginative testimony”(2367). to ecological injustices in a way that captures public attention, stirs emotion, and inspires concrete political action. By telling stories and creating images that are “capable of shining a spotlight on acts of violence that are not easily reduced to media spectacles”(2353), activist writers can help draw public and political attention to the problem of slow violence.  Nixon is doing what he is proposing people to do. Nixon raises the question:  “How can environmental activists and storytellers work to counter the potent political, corporate, and even scientific forces invested in immediate self-interest, procrastination, and dissembling?”(2362).  He discusses the representation of climate change in novels and how it can be challenging to convert the slow-moving and long-term effects of environmental disasters into compelling narratives that can rouse public sentiment and warrant political intervention. He mentions Michael Crichton‘s 2004 environmental conspiracy novel, “State of Fear,” which argued that more data gathering on climate change was needed before any policy decisions could be made. He also notes that Rachel Carson faced a similar dilemma almost half a century ago as she sought to dramatize the environmental impact of pesticides in her book “Silent Spring.” Novels have a special role to play in helping us think more richly, more clearly, and more deeply about climate change due to their capacity for storytelling and empathy-building. Novels have the power to weave together these different aspects into compelling narratives that resonate with readers on an emotional level. 

          Now, the way Nixon corroborates this claim is unusually interesting. Nixon’s use of a slow and gradual writing style can be seen as a deliberate technique to reflect the characteristics of slow violence. Slow violence unfolds slowly, yet it has a significant impact on humans. That is exactly what Nixon is doing. By employing a similar writing style, Nixon creatively and strategically aims to create a parallel experience for the readers. The gradual unfolding of his narrative mirrors the gradual unfolding of slow violence itself. This technique allows readers to immerse themselves in the subject matter and gain a deeper understanding of its complexities. The use of a slow and gradual writing style also has an indirect psychological effect on the readers. As they progress through Nixon’s text, they are subjected to a proposition made by the same author. The proposition here refers to the argument or message that Nixon is conveying about slow violence. By immersing readers in a slow and gradual narrative, Nixon invites them to contemplate and internalize the issue at hand. Furthermore, readers not only encounter Nixon’s proposition but also experience the effects of the enduring issue being discussed. The gradual and chronological nature of Nixon’s writing allows readers to witness the unfolding consequences of slow violence firsthand. This immersive experience can evoke emotional responses, empathy, and a sense of urgency in addressing these issues.

          By “practicing what he preaches” and strategically unfolding his events gradually to mimic the effects of slow violence, Nixon’s excerpt can be seen as a form of literary activism. By embodying the principles he advocates for within his own writing, he builds credibility to his arguments and demonstrates the transformative potential of literature, indirectly making the readers feel the effects of slow violence and helping them understand how “novels have a special role to play in helping us think more richly, more clearly, and more deeply about climate change.”

Isaac Vega Blog post #1

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Each of the three authors bring in their own outlook on Climate Change and its effect on Earth, This idea of “slow violence” amongst the topic of climate change comes from Nixon. Nixon starts off by giving an example of what slow violence is as he talks about the 1980’s disaster where “mothers in the Marshall Islands were still giving birth to ‘headless, eyeless, limbless human infants who would live just a few hours’ because of the long- term effects of radiation contamination from atmospheric nuclear tests con-ducted there from 1948 to 1958.”(pg. 2353) Saying that climate change is slowing causing more and more damage to the Earth in which we have been seeing in more recent years. He also claims that the youths “flickering attention spans” (pg. 2353) is a big cause in the drastic change of climate change because no one is staying focused on the task at hand. Everyone is getting distracted which stays true even in present day with the uproar in social media platforms. Even if someone posts about it we won’t think too much about it and move on to the next funny video we see. LeMenager takes a different approach by speaking about climate change as if it were a book genre as it’s Cli-Fi or climate fiction. LeMenager calls this genre important due to its “notoriety and because of its explicit project of redefining humanism and the humanities.”(pg. 3) LeMenager Is telling us the effects climate change has by saying it is redefining our lives which she isn’t wrong about due to the constant changes in temperature in recent years and it’s only going to get worse from here. But LeMenager goes through others Cli-Fi texts and analyzes them bit by bit. She analyzes these articles because she believes that the ‘news’ genre doesn’t do enough to truly show how bad the climate change situation is as it “implies and end to the everyday itself, since the everyday relies on human habit and its complement of forgetting.”(pg.2) So Lemenager is trying to find more ways to spread awareness since the news doesn’t help as it plays into this generations lack of an attention span. It’s why she lists out all the forms of media that  focuses on Cli-Fi because it’ll keep everyones focus all of this is to help maintain peoples focus and help teach us how we can be more apart of the fight against climate change. As for Ghosh she talks more on her own experience with climate change and working with climate change. She speaks on an experience of an odd weather shift from when she was younger. Ghosh tells us about a time when the winter was over and the typical Delhi heat was supposed to come in. This is “when the hailstorm broke”(pg.16) which was unusual for the weather that Delhi would normally get. This weather caused an eruption among the people as she describes the scene of when she looked up she saw “an extraordinary panoply of objects flying past-bicycles, scooters, lamp posts, sheets f corrugated iron, even entire tea stalls.”(pg.17) These people have never seen a shift in weather this drastic. They all didn’t know what to do and it led to the death of 30 deaths and 700 people getting hurt. Each author spoke about climate change in their own way but all through one common topic that we all need to help in stopping it or what could happen could be catastrophic.

Brendan Leung: Blog #1

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Nixon describes “slow violence” as violence that occurs out of sight and slowly over time. Because this type of violence occurs out of sight, it is often discounted and not paid attention to. This is because violence is typically associated with something that has an immediate impact which includes things such as murder or events such as 9/11. Unlike 9/11 and murder, climate change is something that has slow effects. As journalists explain, “ ‘If it bleeds, it leads’…if it’s bloodless, slow-motion violence, the story is more likely to be buried” (Nixon, 2368). This quote helps explain why acts such as 9/11 and murder muster attention quickly, causing things like climate change to be buried. The effects of releasing gasses into the atmosphere don’t show right away. But, over time, the effects become more apparent. For instance, as stated by Nixon, in the global South babies are being born without certain body parts due to the radiation in the air. In other parts of the world, warmer temperatures are experienced. Throughout his reading, Nixon argues that slow violence is often disregarded since not enough people “see” it. To fix this, Nixon suggests that writer-activists “ can help us apprehend threats imaginatively that remain imperceptible to the senses” (Nixon, 2367). This will allow the effects of climate change in poorer areas to become known to more people. As stated by Nixon, “Poor communities, often disproportionately exposed to the force fields of slow violence—be they military residues or imported e-waste or the rising tides of climate change—are the communities least likely to attract sustained scientific inquiry into causes, effects, and potential redress” (Nixon, 2368). To further explain, poorer communities can’t find a way to express their inhabited fears because if they do, they become targets of forces that have a legal interest in “manufacturing and disseminating doubt” (Nixon, 2368). However, through writing, the quality of life of these people can become an interest to corporate media. As stated by Nixon, “In a world permeated by insidious, yet unseen or imperceptible violence, imaginative writing can help make the unapparent appear…” (Nixon, 2367). In this quote, Nixon implies that writing can help slow violence to become visible.

Overall, I agree with all of the points that Nixon makes. I believe that in the modern world, most people don’t have long attention spans. This leads to many things being forgotten and disregarded. As Nixon points out, climate change is one of those things. Not enough people are aware of climate change and its devastating effects, especially in other parts of the world. This is because many people disregard things that don’t directly affect them. So things like babies being born without certain body parts in the South will likely be irrelevant to people living in the North. Even though climate change has started to have larger impacts on the world such as more wildfires in some areas and increasing temperatures, people are still unaware of how people in poorer areas are affected. This is where novels can play an important role. Novels will allow people in other parts of the world to learn how climate change affects poorer areas and help more people understand what climate change is. This will ultimately lead people to think more deeply about why climate change is happening and what can be done to stop it.

9/7 Blog Post #1

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Using Rob Nixon’s argument, novels do in fact play a special role in helping us think more richly, more clearly, and more deeply about climate change in a way that media such as the news could never do. Nixon brings up the word “apprehension” near the end of his article, going into the fact that writer-activists, as described in Nixon’s article, “can help us apprehend threats imaginatively that remain imperceptible to the senses…” (Nixon, from “Slow Violence”, 15). Writing about climate change challenges the readers understanding of the world around them by exposing them to a myriad of natural disaster/climate change scenarios, forcing them to use their imaginations and think: “Could this happen in real life?” Nixon mentions another point, stating that writer-activists imaginative narratives offer a different kind of  view, or witnessing, and that is of “sights unseen”. He also brings up how poor communities are always “disproportionately exposed to the force fields of slow violence”, and how they are abandoned to sporadic science or no science at all, being subjected to involuntary pharmaceutical experiments and the like. Nixon ties it back to novels by explaining that people such as writers that can help to expose the truths and shed light on the issues that were covered up by those threats, and could also help to share the stories of the people whose not only lives but also entire existence is threatened, yet ignored by the indifferent opinions of the corporate media. Whereas if topics like mistreatment of poor communities and climate change were discussed in the news (as they are occasionally especially when natural disasters hit), the issue would more or less be glossed over and eventually buried under millions of other, less important stories, mostly because people of today’s day and age have priority over the mundane celebrity gossip rather than the fact that we are killing our own planet. The only time the climate matters is if it’s too hot, there are category 4 hurricanes, 30ft tall tsunamis, or any other sort of natural disaster that could wipe out a city, but people tend to forget that there are other sorts of climate changes happening all around us, even if we don’t see it on the news. This would be the type of “slow violence” that Nixon was speaking about before– slowly, but surely, we our killing our own planet and thought we might not be seeing the effects immediately or at all, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Where novels come into play with this, however, as I mentioned before, it introduces new ideas and feeds into curiosity and into the imagination to try to get people to open their eyes. Novels last longer than a 5 minute segment on TV, and actually reading about these issues, whether they’re presented in our own world or in a galaxy far, far away, could provide further insight and absorption of the information, as writing has a much deeper impact than something you can watch with your eyes but not with your brain.