Contribution short abstract:

This contribution aims to examine - through Environmental Humanities and Political Ecology - the Italian environmental injustice case of Porto Marghera and Gabriele Bortolozzo's legacy as a worker who exposed harm, leaving a lasting wound for modern Venetians.

Contribution long abstract:

In the introduction to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in 1994 Al Gore wrote that the merit of the American biologist was that she warned the entire nation of a danger that no one saw – a threat to the entire planet. The biography of our species is studded with multiple episodes of threats, sometimes visible, such as contamination, intoxication, and death, others invisible, such as those rooted in the political world, more challenging to detect and eradicate. The business world, in fact, has often had different interests from those of communities. And yet, there are many events in which initially ignored risks have then emerged in the eyes of all.

With reference to those two different dimensions - one visible, the other apparently invisible – I will attempt to use the methodological tools provided by the Environmental Humanities and Political Ecology in analysing a case of Italian environmental injustice: Porto Marghera and the Venetian lagoon. In particular, after briefly retracing the main stages of the development of the industrial site, I will narrate – through different types of sources (graphic novel, short film, etc.) –, the biography of Gabriele Bortolozzo, the worker who first denounced the VCM (chloride vinyl monomer) plants’ harmfulness and initiated the lawsuit against the Montedison and Enichem managers. What legacy has Bortolozzo left to Venetian environmentalism? For those who live in Venice nowadays, what is the deepest wound linked to the past vicissitudes of Porto Marghera?