Damaged Landscapes and Complex Embodiment

On August 30th, 2023, Cluster Professor Robert Stock will give a talk about Australia's nuclear contamination from a critical disability studies perspective at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographic Society. This year's RGS-IBG Annual International Conference is taking place in London at the Society and Imperial College London, and online from Wednesday, 30th August to Friday, 1st September, prior registration is needed. For the complete program and the registration see the Conference Website.

Abstract

This talk brings together perspectives from environmental humanities and critical, postcolonial disability studies. I focus on Yami Lester, a blind aboriginal activist engaged in social change and political intervention in the settler society of Australia. My presentation will tackle the ecocritical, aesthetic, and political tactics of Lester’s autobiography published in 1993. Being a survivor of British nuclear testing in Australia, Lester’s account is a compelling testimony for the value of life writing in the context of complex embodiment (T. Couser, T. Siebers). Thereby, it also incorporates the problematic history of settler colonialism as a destructive force which, according to Helen Meekosha, produces disability in terms of medico-scientific discourse and actual impaired bodies. The disablement enacted through atomic tests, I argue, did not only affect human inhabitants and traditional owners of the land. Rather, as the case of Australia’s contamination illustrates, colonialism’s slow violence (R. Nixon) extends to the landscapes themselves where the long-lasting, debilitating effects of radiation are still tangible. Thus, by emphasizing Yami’s lived experiences I demonstrate the potential of complex embodiment to create awareness of environmental injustice. Such a critical historical reflection also signals a possibility of imagining a different and more just future.