Paper short abstract:

This paper asks, what if the role of the anthropologist of toxic traces is not to document the protracted tragedy of toxicant harm or the farce of traditional techniques of detoxification but to highlight and accentuate the traces of radically different futures, latent in the everyday.

Paper long abstract:

The traditional means of detoxifying the environment largely rest on the assumption that substantive environmental change can only happen by pinpointing the sources of toxicity and stamping them out. In other words, the future we want is the present minus its insidious residues. From science and activism to legislation and innovation, subtracting or substituting these unwanted elements while also maintaining the status quo has proven to be an illusory task. This paper asks, what if the role of the anthropologist of toxic traces is not to document the protracted tragedy of toxicant harm or the farce of traditional techniques of detoxification but to highlight and accentuate the traces of radically different futures, latent in the everyday. This work draws upon a collaboration with an artist, Tomas Saraceno, in a project that attempts to make solar balloon travel a viable means of mid- and long-range transit. The wind and sun are the critical infrastructures for this carbon-free means of transportation and demands the ethos of engineering pivot from overcoming the environment to calculatedly submitting to it. Rather than approaching the issue of environmental detoxification through the traces by which late industrial capitalism knows itself (i.e. chemistry), this paper urges anthropological visions that render the status quo obsolete in addition to those directly contesting it, which will likely never render a substantially different future.