When we see a type violence occur in front of us we have an immediate reaction to it whether it is in disgust, appreciation, or fear. Nixon gives us the definition of “slow violence”, which is what I will discuss, slow violence is “…a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (2). In the article “Slow violence” written by Nixon and “Boundary Issues” written by Calarco we become conscious of the slow violence humans and animals are being subjected to. There are two categories in slow violence, the first is visibility and the second slow violence is the hierarchy within humans.
Violence is …show more content…
Humans tend to always place themselves as the most superior species. Nixon’s article gives this example through Summer’s speech. Summer’s does not consider Africa as somewhere people live in. He mentions how those people were discounted as long-term casualties, discounted as political agents, and as people who have concerns for their own. Nixon states “…environmentalism of the poor, for it is those people lacking resources who are the principal casualties of slow violence” (4) the rich do not suffer they only get their questions answered. Nixon continues “Their unseen poverty is compounded by the invisibility of the slow violence that permeates so many of their lives. Our media bias toward spectacular violence exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems treated as disposable by turbo-capitalism while simultaneously exacerbating the vulnerability of those whom Kevin Bale, in another context has called “disposable people” (4). These people are placed so below the hierarchy rich people put them in because Summer’s thought it was fine to send all of the waste to them because no one would care or even bother to notice. In “Boundary Issues” we see human verses animal, the idea that experimenting and oppressing animals because of their lack of human attributes is only because humans don’t think of the attributes they lack in. Rotpeter explains to the human audience “Instead, he tells us that he did not imitate human beings because they appealed to him; it was rather that becoming human seemed to him to be the only way out, the only way out of his cage, out of confinement, and out of the zoo that would have otherwise been his fate were he to remain an ape” (617). It is a shame that his only escape was to be human because he did not want to be trapped in another human prison. Similarly in the novel being discussed in the article, “We Are All Completely beside Ourselves” by Karen Joy Fowler, Fern is part of an
Violence is …show more content…
Humans tend to always place themselves as the most superior species. Nixon’s article gives this example through Summer’s speech. Summer’s does not consider Africa as somewhere people live in. He mentions how those people were discounted as long-term casualties, discounted as political agents, and as people who have concerns for their own. Nixon states “…environmentalism of the poor, for it is those people lacking resources who are the principal casualties of slow violence” (4) the rich do not suffer they only get their questions answered. Nixon continues “Their unseen poverty is compounded by the invisibility of the slow violence that permeates so many of their lives. Our media bias toward spectacular violence exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems treated as disposable by turbo-capitalism while simultaneously exacerbating the vulnerability of those whom Kevin Bale, in another context has called “disposable people” (4). These people are placed so below the hierarchy rich people put them in because Summer’s thought it was fine to send all of the waste to them because no one would care or even bother to notice. In “Boundary Issues” we see human verses animal, the idea that experimenting and oppressing animals because of their lack of human attributes is only because humans don’t think of the attributes they lack in. Rotpeter explains to the human audience “Instead, he tells us that he did not imitate human beings because they appealed to him; it was rather that becoming human seemed to him to be the only way out, the only way out of his cage, out of confinement, and out of the zoo that would have otherwise been his fate were he to remain an ape” (617). It is a shame that his only escape was to be human because he did not want to be trapped in another human prison. Similarly in the novel being discussed in the article, “We Are All Completely beside Ourselves” by Karen Joy Fowler, Fern is part of an