Against Purity

Rejects language of ‘contamination’ because this presupposes that purity existed before. The quest for purity within ecology and wellness discourse plays into colonial and white supremacist tropes, which fantasise about returning to a mystical time ‘before’ things got complicated. These dangerous ideologies can be whitewashed through cleansing language. We are entangled, implicated, dirty and rather than try to separate ourselves from the terrestrial mess which constitutes us, we should realise the inherent agency within that position.

For more on this:

  • Alexis Shotwell Against Purity; Living Ethically in Compromised Times (2016)
  • Eula Biss – On Immunity; An Innoculation (2014)
  • Karen Barad – Meeting the Universe Half Way; Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. (2007)