Author Archives: Max Liboiron

Toxins or Toxicants? Why the difference matters

When we accidentally call toxicants “toxins,” we are also accidentally naturalizing industrially-produced chemicals and their politics.

CFP: Muddied Waters: Decomposing the Anthropocene

For its seventh issue, Pivot is calling for papers that not only critically address the Anthropocene as our current geological epoch but, in doing so, attend to pertinent questions concerning the social, political, theoretical, and ecological efficacy of ecocriticism as a framework counter-to the imperatives of both anthropocentrism and global capitalism.

Pollution is Colonialism

Colonialism in Canada is an ongoing structure whereby settler society and government assert sovereignty over lands already occupied by Indigenous peoples.

New articles in Discard Studies (July/August)

Since critical discard studies doesn’t (yet!) have its own journal, conference, or department, Discard Studies publishes a regular table of contents alerts for articles, reports, and books in the field. If you are interested in becoming an editor for non-English article alerts on Discard Studies, or know of a recent article for the next article […]
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CPF: Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy

Workshop – Call for Papers  Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science  (MPIWG) Berlin, Germany – 21-22 June 2018 Convenors: Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (MPIWG, Germany), Thomas Lekan, (University of South Carolina, USA), Sebastián Ureta, (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)   Description […]
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Bibliography on critical approaches to toxics and toxicity

Toxicity, toxins, and toxicants are areas of critical concern because controversies over what they mean, how they act, how they come into being and where, and what counts as evidence have high stake ramifications. These texts offer critical insights into these processes:

Article Alert! New texts in discard studies (May & June 2017)

Since critical discard studies doesn’t (yet!) have its own journal, conference, or department, Discard Studies publishes a regular table of contents alerts for articles, reports, and books in the field. If you are interested in becoming an editor for non-English article alerts on Discard Studies, or know of a recent article for the next article alert, please […]
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Community Responses to Toxic Hazards: A Reading List

A reading list of the David and Goliath story of communities versus industries, governments, and polluting infrastructures.

Recycling Reconsidered: A must-read text for discard studies

If I could only recommend one text in discard studies, it would be Recycling Reconsidered by Samantha MacBride (2011, MIT Press).

CFP: Suspensions: Atmospherics of the Anthropocene (deadline May 26)

This panel aims at expanding the theoretical scope on the Anthropocene by
attuning to air, breathe, volatility, atmospheres and suspension as modes of
attending to the more-than-solid ecologies of the Anthropocene. We ask: what
temporalities, phenomenologies, embodiments, and politics does the
Anthropocene invoke when thought in aerial, eolic, respiratory or
atmospheric terms?