ABSTRACT
The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is universally recognized as a watershed event in the history of modern environmentalism. Yet Silent Spring offered even more sweeping and radical critiques: of capitalism, productionism, militarism, and corporate control of government agendas. When Silent Spring was released, the pesticides narrative was so dominant, and Carson's findings so shocking to most readers, that the larger socio-political critical position within which her pesticides findings were embedded went largely unremarked. Carson saw considerable similarity between the ideology of the development and use of radiation and the development of synthetic chemicals, and in their similar health and environmental consequences; they were the evil twins of her age. She remarked caustically on the role of advertising and the manipulation of class and gender identity by pesticide manufacturers in their effort to mount a campaign against crabgrass on suburban lawns.
