Asbestos

Bibliographic Data

ID5108291
AuthorsA Rose (0000-0003-0817-6898, University of Exeter, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume16
Issue2
Pages460-477
Publication date2024-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironmental Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/22011919-11150115
OpenAlexW4400684095
LanguageEN
References cited23

Asbestos has long been a staple lesson for the precautionary principle. As a toxic material, it is often something people hope not to encounter. But before this, it often appeared as a substance of hope, carrying the promise of safety and economic rewards. This article uses these conflicting accounts of asbestos's hope as a starting point for thinking about the conditions of hazardous hope. Turning to a vignette about an asbestos facility in Mike McCormack's Solar Bones (2016), the article considers how stories of hazardous hope may produce a diminishment of hope. Rather than dismiss this as insufficiently hopeful, however, the article addresses the form of the novel as an exemplar of accessible experimentalism, suggesting it models new ways of communicating complex problems. If narrativizing hope demands an openness to multiple possible futures, then the form of such hope might need to defer resolution in much the same way as that adopted by modernist writing

Asbestos · Composite material · Materials Science · Microplastics and Plastic Pollution · Occupational and environmental lung diseases · Occupational exposure and asthma

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access