Toxic Knowledge: A Mercurial Fugue In Three Parts

摘要

In a provocative discussion on the nature and historicity of scientific knowledge, Bruno Latour asks: "Where were microbes before Pasteur?" He concludes: "after 1864 airborne germs were there all along," which presents the historian with an interesting portal into the history of scientific knowledge and its relationship with environmental politics. The history of toxic environments is largely reactionary in nature: the framing of new environmental standards comes in response to the discovery of hazards and those standards are frequently revised as new information becomes available. Reactionary history and the changing contexts of awareness of toxic hazards are suggestive of what Latour called the "historicity" of scientific knowledge: "History not only passes but transforms." Scientific discoveries alter our reading of the past. Drawing on a similar epistemological trope, this essay surveys the histories of knowing and unknowing surrounding a series of confusions related to the discovery of mercury contamination in rivers and lakes in the northern hemisphere between the 1960s and 1980s. In so doing, it offers an index toward thinking historically about toxic bodies and toxic environments.