...Poison Ivy (1998) In 1998, in response to the debates surrounding the work of the artist Kara Walker, which had been denounced by some in the black art world for its play with racist imagery, Harvard University hosted a panel on stereotypes in contemporary art. Ronald Jones, the artist and critic...

...INTRODUCTION LIFE IN THE MIDST OF POISON During the years that I engaged in my long- term fieldwork in southern Colombia, the military obliged people to periodically stop at roadside checkpoints. Depending on the public order sce- narios, these stops could occur every forty- five minutes. At best...

... the pharmakon (“drug,” “medicine,” “remedy,” “poison”), the chapter argues against the critical desire for remedies that do no harm. The efforts to find a purely beneficial remedy (or even simply a better, less harmful remedy) usually suppose that a reliable, clear distinction between poison and cure...

... faced, and tells the story of a particular experience in El Salvador when Rosemarie was harassed by the military and suspected that one of her meals was poisoned. ...

...7 A PLASTIC BAG FULL OF CHOLERA Rhodesia and Biological and Chemical Weapons During this war, guerrillas firmly believed that Rhodesian security forces were poisoning them. Poisons were a well- known means of harming people in Central African systems of thought; while few guerrillas would have...

...16 Account of a Conspiracy Organized by the Negroes, 1758 Anonymous In 1758, an enslaved man named Makandal became the focus of planters and officials who believed that he was coordinating a campaign of poisoning across the colony. At the time of these events, the Jesuit order was active in Saint...

... military regimes in the 1960s. He also dedicated a chapter of his dark book to the grim destiny of mineworkers. In his account, the highland mining camps were cemeteries full of men who aged and died prematurely, whose bodies were poisoned, and whose labor enriched New York and London more than it did...

... are risky. Using Derrida’s notion of the pharmakon (“drug,” “medicine,” “remedy,” “poison”), the chapter argues against the critical desire for remedies that do no harm. The efforts to find a purely beneficial remedy (or even simply a better, less harmful remedy) usually suppose that a reliable, clear...

... ), and cotton-top tamarins ( Saguinus oedipus ). Unexploded bombs and chemical weapons, rivets fastening an emergent ecosystem in place, have the indeterminate properties of the pharmakon. Classically, the pharmakon is a poisonous substance that can have a therapeutic effect depending on the dose, the...

... deviations are measured, and the political sensibility generated by public attention to epidemics. The Regional Health Service's chief epidemiologist traces how he investigated the first strange cases and structured his work around an urban toxicologist's hypothesis that mercury poisoning was the cause. The...

... animals that call it home. And the creatures that do survive are left homeless. Another way that divers catch coral reef fish is with cyanide. Cyanide is a poison. The divers pour this poison on the reef, which stuns the fish and kills the coral. Then they rip open the reef with crowbars and catch the...