Toxic Mediation Open Access
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Published:May 2025
Chemical toxicity was perhaps the most pressing concern for residents of the sugarcane zone, but because toxic damage was sometimes painfully obvious and other times merely possible, residents had to develop creative ways to keep attention on the problem. Rather than see toxicity as simply a question of material interactions between bodies and chemicals, this chapter illustrates how people in the sugarcane zone worked to make toxicity legible through a variety of media, including the oral sharing of stories and the exchange of videos and photographs on platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. By rethinking toxic worlds as mediated worlds, people in the sugarcane zone found a method for questioning the premises of both pesticide regulation and toxicology. If toxicity is made in the circulation of narratives, and not just in the circulation of molecules, then the media of telecommunication, digital photography, and storytelling become essential tools in environmental politics.