This visualization speaks to notions of how alcoholism renders a society toxic by extension of disciplinary regimes that conflate masculinity with violence.
Put simply, this visualization recenters geography as contested terrain for the rendering of specific places more toxic than others as they intersect with the inhabited spaces of racialized others.
This visualization presents toxcities as gendered, paradoxical with narratives of powerful masculinity as well as vulnerabilties of men, and finally, attached emotional geographies (like nostalgia, leisure, etc.)
The visualisation and the caption do not explicitly address toxics, but there is an implicit message of toxic urban development that excludes and differentiates on a racial basis.
This image speaks to the mutliple scales at which toxics operate when it comes to air pollution, and how they are entangled in political sruggles. It also speaks to how different types of data can be mobilised in the particular political framing of an issue as wither a question of social justice or individual rights.
This picture and the caption tells us not only about the presence of toxins in the river, but also how they become visible through ecological patterns in the form of the algal bloom, and how they become invisble again through limited solutions related to social forces, such as religious practices.
This visualization is positioned within an discusson of toxic male culture in Guatemala. It speaks to the specificity of toxic masculinity in an ethnographic context. The author writes that the image shows the negative impact of alcohol abuse on society, but I'm not sure that this visualization addresses that aspect. There is an interesting dynamic at play between alcoholism, sexual potency and toxic masculinity. In the image I think toxics is linked to limpness as part of a progression. I'm curious how potency and toxic masculinity might be intertwined and analyzed from a different perspective.
Toxicity is largely a social phenomenon based on the policing of certain bodies over others via class, race, gender, and sex. The police themselves are toxic, serving the whims of the city and upper-class residents--in this case, the notion of "safety" is toxic, as in order for some groups of people to feel "safe," others end up being put in great danger by the very forces that are allegedly supposed to be protecting everyone. Questions of citizenship arise from this visualization--who is seen as being a citizen worthy of care and protection? Prostitutes are conveyed as being criminals who do not deserve protection or care, are feminized by the pink sign, and are threatened for merely being physically in the presence of a particular space. In the process, toxic heteronormative hegemony is reinforced.
Toxicity is related to any place, daily life is surrounded by contaminant activities and pollutants are part of population activities necessary to survive in the current economy.
The characterization of historical absences and silences as toxics archives is provocative. I especially appreciate how the author uses imagined visualizations as a challenge to toxicity.
As an undergraduate I studied with Carlo Ginzburg whose work also examined silences in the archive and developed microhistory as a critical response (The Cheese and the Worms is one example).
The author's imaginative visualizations address our understanding of the past through creative, critical practice. Her work challenges and extends my understanding of toxic spaces.