People try to put an end to toxicity. Societies that are struggling to survive in capitalism try to convince themselves that there are cases where we can stop toxicity. Reality is that once it starts it goes on. It reveals itself differently through time, but it doesn’t go away. This image shows a common story of environmental injustice, and who is seen as an “ideal” resident of a toxic site that fails to speak truth to its real toxic past.
The visual is a representation of a developer’s text analyzed and categorized by the author . I would like to know what potential residents or activists think about this analysis. I also feel there is room to draw connections with this common story of toxicity and dispossession with similar sites (even within southern california) as well as similarities of the narratives about an “idyllic” future that capitalist expansion might bring along (in and beyond California).
It is an image of text from a housing developer in Pasadena combined with colors the author added as they interpret the text. The use of a green-yellow-red highlighting to signal imagined past-present-futures is very catchy and works well to point to the linguistic agencies behind this promotional text.
In the visual there is an explanation about the words in red and the words in green. What do the words in yellow represent? It would be interesting if there were some kind of representation contrasting what residents (or even activists) think about the text.
This visualization highlights the way in which history can be told in a way that embellishes the use of toxics and the creation of toxic environments, by pretending that there are solutions to stop toxicity and start all over again, or simply creating a narrative that renders invisible any trace of a toxic past
