Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the rejection of the notion of air pollution among some residents of what is often reported as “the most polluted town in Montenegro”, not merely as a disposition of “unknowing” or “toxic confusion" but an expression of agency within the “slow techno-ecological disaster”.

Paper long abstract:

In contrast to public resistance of local communities to pollution, those who are rejecting the notion of being the “suffering subjects”, ignoring the environmental harm or devaluing it, have not been explored so much within ethnographies of environmental injustice. While most of my interlocutors in the town of northern Montenegro expressed long-standing environmental suffering created primarily by the industrial and non-industrial coal combustion, some residents rejected the idea of their coal-mining town – which also hosts the coal-fired power station – being “particularly polluted”.

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this paper seeks to explore the agency of those questioning and rejecting the image of “the most polluted town in the country” and its toxicity. I will explore how the agency of the “polluted subjects at the periphery” is not only expressed through social mobilisation or more intimate forms of resistance but it can be articulated through the rejection of pollution of the built environment itself. I will show that the subjectivities of those who reject the notion of “being polluted” indeed may consist of, but also be constituted beyond the disposition of “unknowing” and “toxic confusion” (Auyero & Swistun 2009). The paper demonstrates that this position serves as a coping mechanism in the “slow techno-ecological disaster” setting and as a particular performative strategy built upon the experiences, values and affects within the peripheralised community.