WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.300 I've talked about what it's like to be exposed to toxicity, and how it might make us relate 00:00:05.300 --> 00:00:12.100 differently to our own bodies. In this video I'll go a little bit into how toxicity and exposure can 00:00:12.100 --> 00:00:18.800 Inspire anthropologists to experiment with new ways of noticing and new ways of writing, this is 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:26.100 about the idea that exposure and radiation and toxicity require a certain way of paying attention to 00:00:26.100 --> 00:00:30.150 the world and a certain way of writing and I think specifically a certain way of paying NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:00:30.150 --> 00:00:37.900 attention to not just the things that are immediately and noticeable in front of us but also to such 00:00:37.900 --> 00:00:46.400 things as ghostly presences and long-distance connections. So exposure and toxicity are subjects in a 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:53.800 sense that it is compelling and inspire some degree of experimentation in writing, and we've gotten some 00:00:53.800 --> 00:01:00.050 Clues already from Chen for instance we get style of writing that's very close and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:01:00.050 --> 00:01:07.500 almost kind of biographical or a certain kind auto-ethnography it's a fancy word for it. So to 00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:14.600 write about one's own body and how it becomes a site of observation but also how when observed it's 00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:20.400 clear that the body is not just local but contains a multitude of others so how you write about that 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:27.200 kind of thing right, and it's something that you have an experience with and so Chen's solution is to 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:30.100 write about that experience NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:01:30.100 --> 00:01:38.200 from their own point of view. From both Chen and Jones we get experiments with how to evoke 00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:47.400 in writing sort of unusual space-time connections, ways to invoke for instance how one man's body on 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:54.100 a Caribbean island is tied to French Colonial history and international commodity chains or how 00:01:54.100 --> 00:02:00.050 Factory workers in China are tied to little kids with plastic toys in the US, both of them NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:02:00.050 --> 00:02:08.000 also I think find ways to try and make visible things that aren't easy to notice such as the ghostly 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:14.900 ties that I have mentioned. Now we can look more closely at the article by Kate Brown with learning to 00:02:14.900 --> 00:02:23.000 read the great Chernobyl acceleration. So Kate Brown is concerned with how to read the landscapes in Chernobyl 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:30.250 and how to write about them, in certain ways these Landscapes confounds our literal ways of thinking NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:02:30.250 --> 00:02:36.600 they require other ways of paying attention than we might be used to. So when it comes to 00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:44.500 exposure and radiation our imagination and our descriptive capabilities might fall short or we might 00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:50.700 feel that they do. So Brown describes how she starts out with the archives that's our first 00:02:50.700 --> 00:02:56.700 inclination as an anthropologist finding out something about the 00:02:56.700 --> 00:02:59.950 past right to go to the archives and fairly quickly NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:02:59.950 --> 00:03:09.100 she finds that they just won't do sources of an account of Chernobyl and when it comes to an 00:03:09.100 --> 00:03:17.750 event like Chernobyl and phenomena like exposure to radiation more generally you might find that 00:03:17.750 --> 00:03:26.500 only a very limited part of the story makes it into the archives and there's at least two reasons 00:03:26.500 --> 00:03:30.000 for this and one is that often archives are NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:39.050 Filtered through state power and so the states might not want everything to make it into the archive 00:03:39.050 --> 00:03:46.400 the other reason is that exposure has this kind of uncanny existence which is an existence that can 00:03:46.400 --> 00:03:55.200 be difficult to notice, an existence that doesn't always figure as events and therefore don't 00:03:55.200 --> 00:04:00.050 usually make it into historical accounts so Chernobyl as NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:04:00.050 --> 00:04:07.900 the event Chernobyl that happened on this in this day in 1986 makes it into the archive but the 00:04:07.900 --> 00:04:16.100 ways in which exposure persists and continues to linger in the landscape and bodies that doesn't 00:04:16.100 --> 00:04:23.200 as easily make it into the archive. So archives can't tell Kate Brown what it feels like where what 00:04:23.200 --> 00:04:28.600 she feels like she needs to know about Chernobyl and then so she goes and seeks out this. 00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:30.050 She looks at individual NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:04:30.050 --> 00:04:36.150 People they can tell us other things, bodies individual bodies they can tell us a lot of things, trees 00:04:36.150 --> 00:04:42.300 they can also cause other things. I'll point to three of the sort of the writing strategies that 00:04:42.300 --> 00:04:51.500 she uses and they are first the old woman, and then the contorted pine tree and then the 00:04:51.500 --> 00:04:58.600 two ecologists so these are characters in her ethnography but they are also we 00:04:58.600 --> 00:04:59.950 might say methods for NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:04:59.950 --> 00:05:06.000 for re-orienting our imagination and our way of writing so they are imaginative resources, and they 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:13.400 are writing strategies. So being attempting to the 98 year old woman allows us to see and to 00:05:13.400 --> 00:05:20.600 narrate this place in a very different way than what the official archives allows us to do. Notice 00:05:20.600 --> 00:05:27.900 that the archives where a Kate Brown started out they tell a certain kind of story a story where people 00:05:27.900 --> 00:05:30.500 appear as numbers NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:05:30.500 --> 00:05:40.600 and so on so many instances of symptoms, so you get a story consisting of 40,000 hospitalized 54 00:05:40.600 --> 00:05:50.000 deceased this many children with anaemia and strange neurological ticks and so on. Contamination isn't 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:56.700 felt or experienced in this version of the story, it is merely something that's counted but if we 00:05:56.700 --> 00:05:59.900 instead we start with the old woman we get NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:05:59.900 --> 00:06:06.500 a very different kind of story so. The 98 year old woman who lived almost her entire life 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:13.250 in this small Village near Chernobyl and she told her life story to Kate Brown she told her about 00:06:13.250 --> 00:06:20.100 her childhood her daily chores as a child about seeing the animals in shed about her persistent 00:06:20.100 --> 00:06:28.100 routines going between pastures the forest the town Square and back about leading the cattle down to the 00:06:28.100 --> 00:06:30.000 river and about foraging for greens NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:39.300 to make a soup, two wars happened around these daily routines. German tanks, 00:06:39.300 --> 00:06:45.200 Red Army soldiers, construction crews with heavy machinery all sort of arrived and 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:52.549 disappear out of this story while the woman lingers and persists and she is still there. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:06:52.549 --> 00:07:00.750 We can think of the woman as a writing strategy to focus on her is a method for bringing into view 00:07:00.750 --> 00:07:08.300 continuity and the enduring alongside the rapid changes and the apparent exceptional event fulness 00:07:08.300 --> 00:07:14.300 of Chernobyl, so through her we can see that the local places that are affected by changes in 00:07:14.300 --> 00:07:16.150 the landscape NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:16.150 --> 00:07:24.550 also embody other possibilities and other kinds of Life ways and other rhythms and other 00:07:24.550 --> 00:07:32.200 patterns other other kinds of life and sense she is way to invoke a sense that there are 00:07:32.200 --> 00:07:39.400 other temporalities that go on alongside modernities hyper speed changes. She is a way to revoke 00:07:39.400 --> 00:07:45.600 and bring into view continuity of landscape change and intervention to show that landscape change 00:07:45.600 --> 00:07:46.500 has been going on NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:53.700 for a long time, that they are not just events that happen in place where there's been a 00:07:53.700 --> 00:07:59.800 continuity of no change as a writing strategy she has one way to show that Chernobyl was a 00:07:59.800 --> 00:08:06.400 continuation and not the completely novel event, a way to sort of disrupt the exceptionalism of the 00:08:06.400 --> 00:08:12.400 Chernobyl event to show that the disaster was a continuation of something that has had been going 00:08:12.400 --> 00:08:16.400 on for a long time. As Kate Brown puts it a way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:08:16.400 --> 00:08:24.200 situational as a point of acceleration on a timeline of destruction. Through the woman we 00:08:24.200 --> 00:08:30.000 get to see this timeline of destruction, we get to see that it may not be the apparent 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:37.799 disastrous exceptional event happening on this day in 1986 that is disaster but it is rather that 00:08:37.799 --> 00:08:46.500 the disaster lies in the long continuous destruction that happens over a century and crucially the woman NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:08:46.500 --> 00:08:52.600 shows us that this timeline of destruction is not all there is in the landscape that there are also 00:08:52.600 --> 00:08:59.800 other things that go on in this place than massive accelerated change. Things like walking the same 00:08:59.800 --> 00:09:06.200 trails in the forest foraging for plants and mushrooms going to the river into the Town Square and 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:12.200 through the shed them and tending to the animals for nearly a century. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:20.900 A second writing strategy is the contorted pine tree or more specifically the writing strategy is to 00:09:20.900 --> 00:09:27.900 take the contorted pine tree as a character in the story of Chernobyl so Brown describes this one 00:09:27.900 --> 00:09:33.600 contorted and sickly-looking pine tree grows in a crater in the middle of what used to be a bomb 00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:40.900 test site the tree she writes grew and certainly it's needles disorganized curling in round 00:09:40.900 --> 00:09:43.599 Rather than straight from the branch NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:09:43.599 --> 00:09:51.900 and I take the pine tree to be a way to show local access in the way and specificity and the nature's 00:09:51.900 --> 00:10:02.100 capacity to take us by surprise. Pine trees usually in our expectation they are 00:10:02.100 --> 00:10:09.400 especially vulnerable to radiation and according to those expectations this pine tree shouldn't 00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:13.650 really be able to grow hair in that crater and with this amount NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:10:13.650 --> 00:10:19.900 of radiation it's not supposed to be able to do that, but it does and it does so in sort of 00:10:19.900 --> 00:10:28.200 spindly and crooked way in and with an unfamiliar form. This makes it a part landscape that demands 00:10:28.200 --> 00:10:33.600 of us an openness that the man said we hold some of our assumptions and expectations of the 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:41.100 landscape back that demands that we not just think of this landscape through our ideas about 00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:43.650 what it's supposed to be able to do but that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:10:43.650 --> 00:10:50.100 We actually go out there and look and question for ourselves, this shows the world where a tree isn't 00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:57.100 just a tree it isn't just a representative of the species of pine but it is a particular and 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:02.800 peculiar individual tree whose capacities their capabilities in the world are not altogether 00:11:02.800 --> 00:11:09.400 contained within the expectation that we have to this abstract pine tree. The contorted pine tree 00:11:09.400 --> 00:11:13.700 highlights the possibility of access the possibility that things in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:11:13.700 --> 00:11:20.800 exceed what we expect to learn, a landscape where what it is to be a pine tree isn't stable and 00:11:20.800 --> 00:11:26.500 immutable but liable to change in surprising ways. You might remember I already my pickup that 00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:34.800 there's sort of a similarity heard you how I Peytrina writes about Wildfire we see here a tree that 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:41.200 that does things that trees aren't supposed to do right in in the same way that for Petrina there 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:43.650 are wild fires now that do things NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:11:43.650 --> 00:11:49.100 that wildfires aren't supposed to do but then we can question whether or not these are 00:11:49.100 --> 00:11:55.400 new developments which is sort of the the impression we get from Petrina or is 00:11:55.400 --> 00:12:00.800 this just something that was always the case with nature that this capability to 00:12:00.800 --> 00:12:10.200 exceed expectations and to be more than what they seem to be able to be is this just some kind of 00:12:10.200 --> 00:12:13.700 Excess that lies in nature that we haven't been able to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:12:13.700 --> 00:12:19.900 be aware of, I think that this goes like that to the conversation we had last week. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:12:22.800 --> 00:12:33.200 So the third writing strategy is two ecologist they are a way to describe 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:41.200 landscape or they are used to be able to describe the landscape through someone else's noticing so 00:12:41.200 --> 00:12:48.850 she describes how these two ecologists go out and become surprised by the landscape. 00:12:48.850 --> 00:12:53.450 She writes about how they were surprised in ways we might not think about NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:12:53.450 --> 00:13:00.600 usually the way that scientists noticed Landscapes right was so for instance was surprised when he 00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:07.400 walked through Chernobyl he was surprised that his face was clean that he 00:13:07.400 --> 00:13:16.500 didn't have to clear spider webs from his face and and so this is kind of a surprise that arises 00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:22.700 through his own memories of this place in the past but it also is something that it's difficult 00:13:22.700 --> 00:13:23.400 to measure NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:13:23.400 --> 00:13:33.200 a clean face but it's more so perhaps a kind of an emotional surprise also and they 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:41.700 also noticed absences right and absences that will necessarily be something that would be captured 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:52.150 by the scientific method, so one thing was that they noticed the absence of bird noises bird songs. So 00:13:52.150 --> 00:13:53.400 Kate Brown is then NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:13:53.400 --> 00:14:00.000 able to describe landscape that has an eerie lack of insects that had trees with less fruit and with 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:06.300 fewer birds and she takes to describe Landscapes through the ways that Landscapes affect people's 00:14:06.300 --> 00:14:13.300 senses and emotions. So the Chernobyl zone is a place that lacked the feel of insects the sound of 00:14:13.300 --> 00:14:20.000 birds and the smell of decomposing leaves for these two ecologists right, so she's then able to write 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:23.349 about Chernobyl landscape not in itself NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:14:23.349 --> 00:14:28.800 Or something apart from us but through the ways of these ecologists engaged with the landscape 00:14:28.800 --> 00:14:33.600 through the ways that the landscape tugs and pulls up them and through the ways of the landscape 00:14:33.600 --> 00:14:40.200 seems to demand certain things of them. So they knew are allowed to 00:14:40.200 --> 00:14:46.850 ask and explore what kinds of noticing what ways of paying attention this landscape demands from us 00:14:46.850 --> 00:14:53.400 they show this kind of literacy a way of reading landscape and and the kind of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:14:53.400 --> 00:15:03.800 Literacy that revolves around being open to taking Impressions and to be nudged by 00:15:03.800 --> 00:15:10.400 how the landscape tugs and pulls at you and it's open to taking seriously what the 00:15:10.400 --> 00:15:15.100 landscape does to our emotions and our senses. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:15:15.200 --> 00:15:22.700 so in general and what we can take from Brown about not just writing Chernobyl but writing exposure 00:15:22.700 --> 00:15:30.300 radiation and toxicity generally I think here are these three things here first of all it's a way to 00:15:30.300 --> 00:15:37.900 challenge events or eventfulness and radiation shows us how occurrences linger and endure 00:15:37.900 --> 00:15:46.550 how they are stretched out in time what is apparently an event like Chernobyl are NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:15:46.550 --> 00:15:54.200 you know when it comes to radiation exposure and toxicity and the eventfulness might be deceptive 00:15:54.200 --> 00:16:02.200 in the sense it might be the enduring this studies the most important feature. Secondly to write 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:08.900 the world as locally capable of surprising us and undermining our expectations that's sort of 00:16:08.900 --> 00:16:15.600 lesson we can learn from Kate Brown here how do we write a world 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:15.950 that's NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:16:15.950 --> 00:16:23.500 capable of doing things that it's not supposed to. Number 3 writing the world through 00:16:23.500 --> 00:16:29.500 our relations which I think that's also something you can take away from the Brown reading which 00:16:29.500 --> 00:16:35.600 is also a feature we get from Chen as well so this is not an external world out there 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:42.200 but a world that exists for people and in relation to their body's senses and ways of thought. So 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:45.950 this is an example of how to write a world where both the environment NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 58% (MEDIUM) 00:16:45.950 --> 00:16:54.300 and our ways of describing and knowing it are are put in motion and are not stable and static.