DeepSummary
The episode is a conversation with Dr. Sunaura Taylor, author of the book 'Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert'. She discusses how her personal experiences growing up near a contaminated site in Tucson, Arizona shaped her understanding of disability as a political issue emerging from environmental harm and social injustice. Taylor explores the concept of 'disabled ecologies' - the entanglement of human and non-human injury caused by environmental degradation.
Taylor highlights the connections between environmental justice movements and disability movements, arguing that while they may employ different strategies, they share a commitment to challenging individualized notions of disability and illness. She traces the history of the groundwater contamination in Tucson's Mexican American community and the racist responses from city officials that denied accountability.
The conversation delves into the politics of origin stories, the tensions around 'cure' and restoration, and the need for an 'environmentalism of the injured' that provides care and support for disabled lives. Taylor advocates for bringing critical disability perspectives into environmental discourses to imagine livable futures for injured environments and communities.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Dr. Sunaura Taylor introduces the concept of 'disabled ecologies' to analyze the interlinked injuries experienced by human and non-human communities due to environmental harm and social injustice.
- The book examines the convergences and divergences between environmental justice and disability movements in their approaches to origin stories, notions of cure, and framing of disability/illness.
- Taylor traces the history of groundwater contamination in a Mexican American community in Tucson, Arizona, highlighting the racist responses from city officials and the activism that emerged.
- The conversation advocates for bringing critical disability perspectives into environmental discourses to move towards an 'environmentalism of the injured' that centers care and support for disabled lives.
- Taylor calls for forging kinships between disability and degraded environments to reshape responses to environmental crises and imagine livable futures for injured ecosystems and communities.
- The book deploys innovative methods like using footnotes as an 'aquifer' to make the text more accessible and explore metaphors of disability in describing environmental damage.
- Taylor emphasizes the increasing relevance of disability frameworks as climate change leads to more widespread disablement across human and non-human realms.
- The conversation highlights the importance of politicizing disability narratives and origin stories to challenge ableist responses to environmental injustice.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “Disabled ecology has kind of emerged for me as a way, really, of identifying relationships of injury across human and non human boundaries.“ by Sunaura Taylor
- “Origin stories are a tool to show that something has happened that often. Right. Of course. That environmental racism is taking place or has taken place or is ongoing, that something has happened to the community.“ by Sunaura Taylor
- “I believe it's in the conclusion or maybe the prior chapter, really talk about the different ways in which you can kind of follow these different trajectories of that, I think are just increasing with the increasing disablement that stems from the real catastrophes of the climate crisis and extinction that we are living through.“ by Sunaura Taylor
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Episode Information
New Books in Environmental Studies
Marshall Poe
5/21/24