Toxic Nature : Narratives of Biocultural Precarity (original) (raw)

2022, Nature and Literary Studies

All biological precarity is biocultural precarity. “Precarity” here signals the nature of existence of biological forms embedded in contexts inimical – toxic – to life. Precarity induced by toxins and toxicity alters the form of life adversely. The toxic nature of human nature (which is my concern here, rather than toxicity in rivers, soil, and nonhuman lifeforms), so to speak, may have its origins in exogenous causal factors such as industrial (Bhopal’s methyl isocyanate) or agricultural pollutants (such as Endosulfan sprayed as pesticide in Kerala, southern India), pharmacological interven- tions (numerous mutagens), or internal and inherited factors (genetically inherited conditions such as Huntington’s disease). The scope and degree of toxic human nature – de!ned as a toxicity embedded in the material unit of the human that produces alterations, diseases, conditions that adversely a"ect corporeal, intellectual, psychological, emotional behaviors – may be somatic or genetic, that is, restricted to an individual and non- reproducible (somatic), or transmissible across generations (genetic). In all cases, this chapter suggests, changes in human nature – by which I mean anatomical, physiological, behavioral – are biocultural, with both somatic and genetic toxicity being embedded in cultural systems and processes, from family to biomedicine, care-giving apparatuses to insurance.