Residues: Thinking through Chemical Environments

Abstract

‘‘Residues are the Anthropocene’’ (p. 15) is the provocative yet thoughtful statement that illustrates the proposition of the book Residues: Thinking through Chemical Environments, by Soraya Boudia, Angela Creager, Scott Frickel, Emmanuel Henry, Nathalie Jas, Carsten Reinhardt, and Jody Roberts. This short, fascinating, and stimulating essay invites us on an analytical and empirical journey to understand the ‘‘world-making power’’ (p. 123) of chemicals and their aftereffects in the long run, aftereffects that compare in scale and depth with anthropogenic climate change. Residues is written by seven prominent European and U.S. historians, sociologists, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars who specialize in the study of the material, social, and political life of chemicals. But the book is not an edited volume where each chapter is authored by one or two researchers: it is written as one consistent essay, which makes it a powerful intellectual proposition rather than a more classical collection of papers. It was made possible by a collaboration over a long period of time (since 2010), which brought the authors together in meetings and joint sessions at international conferences, and in writing workshops organized across the United States, France, and Germany. The book is organized in five sections. The introduction coins the concept ‘‘residues’’ and illustrates how it can contribute to environmental STS. The second chapter studies the legacy of residues, their persistence in time. The third chapter is dedicated to accretion, the geographies of residues, and their dissemination in space. The fourth chapter focuses on the apprehension of residues, the way they are made objects of knowledge and of concern by various social agents. Ultimately, the concluding chapter proposes ‘‘residual materialism’’ as a framework to study chemical environments. The introduction demonstrates that the bureaucratization of chemicals, which relies on quantification and data production from industrial and public bodies alike, can be understood as a form of regulatory inaction. Global chemical production figures are so high that they can be paralyzing, contributing to making regulation seem unreachable; while the regular dispute over the quality of data in regulatory circles can contribute to maintaining the status quo. To offer a new framework, the book theorizes the politics of chemicals with the concept of residues: deriving ‘‘from the Latin residuum, meaning ‘something remaining’ . . . the residues we follow in this book are at once a byproduct of extractive and industrial technology, history, and organization and also catalysts escaped from the lab, landfill, or the mine and urging into existence new biological, chemical, geological and sociotechnical worlds’’ (p. 8). This focus on residues has methodological implications, calling for innovative approaches to trace the chemical dispersion and its effects on material environments, bodily experiences, and institutional settings. Residues are defined through five properties: their irreversibility, their materiality, their slipperiness, their unruliness, and their negative value. This thoughtful concept is then anchored in a discussion with the literature in urban, environmental, and energy studies, as well as in STS. 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human _stampedes_and_crushes Reviews 225