Fiske Amelia
Division of Biomedical Ethics, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Soc Stud Sci. 2018 Jun;48(3):389-413. doi: 10.1177/0306312718781505. Epub 2018 Jun 11.
In September 2013, President Correa balanced himself on a felled log over an oil waste pit in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Extending a bare hand dripping with crude, he launched La Mano Sucia de Chevron campaign, demanding accountability for decades of contamination. This article explores the role of bodily knowledge in witnessing industrial contamination and struggles for environmental justice. Situating the mano sucia in the history of activism in the region, I show how the juxtaposition of different hands within the same motif reveals profoundly asymmetric relationships to the toxic entanglements that oil produces. Dirtied hands reveal the co-production of toxicity and power in extractive landscapes: At times throughout this article, the gesture calls for corporate accountability and distributive environmental justice, at other times, it reveals the systemic production of material, social and political distance between the accrual of benefit and the production of harm in an industrial-capitalist order. While drawing on the central role of bodily knowledges in apprehending environmental harm, I argue that bodily knowledges must also be examined for their specific relationships to forms of power and exploitation, and for their potential for appropriation by other parties - even when dedicated to condemning environmental injustice.
2013年9月，科雷亚总统在厄瓜多尔亚马逊地区的一个石油废料坑上，在一根砍倒的原木上保持平衡。他伸出一只沾满原油的赤手，发起了“雪佛龙的脏手”运动，要求对数十年来的污染问题追究责任。本文探讨身体知识在见证工业污染及环境正义斗争中的作用。将“脏手”置于该地区激进主义历史中，我展示了同一主题中不同的手并列如何揭示与石油产生的有毒纠葛的深刻不对称关系。脏手揭示了采掘地毒性与权力的共同产生：在本文的不同时候，这个手势要求企业承担责任并实现分配性环境正义，而在其他时候，它揭示了工业资本主义秩序中利益积累与危害产生之间物质、社会和政治距离的系统性产生。在借鉴身体知识在认识环境危害方面的核心作用时，我认为还必须审视身体知识与权力和剥削形式的具体关系，以及它们被其他各方挪用的可能性——即使是在致力于谴责环境不公正的时候。
