ABSTRACT
One of the principal means through which outsiders have come to recognize histories of oil contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon is through “Toxic Tours” in which a guide brings students, lawyers, environmental activists, journalists, and tourists to visit toxic sites. Inspired by the creative ways that the guides engage participants – inviting them to smell crude oil or to step out onto logs suspended over 3 meters of crude waste – the graphic novel Toxic: A Tour of the Ecuadorian Amazon immerses readers in the materiality of toxic contamination and struggles for environmental justice in everyday life. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2011 and 2013, the novel narrates the discovery of crude oil in waste pits and the stories of Ecuadorian residents living alongside industry through the journey of three participants on a “Toxic Tour.” Drawing on the experience of co-creating Toxic, this chapter explores the process of bringing graphic art and ethnography together in order to render toxicity in graphic form, asking: What challenges emerge in moving from the partial, shifting, entangled knowledge of toxicity that emerges in the ethnographic encounter to graphic art? How is toxicity translated, and transformed, through the graphic form? Inspired by the urgency of life in a moment where preventing permeation by the continual, residual, overwhelming onslaught of industrial toxicants is neither possible nor expected, this chapter explores the implications of conveying the sensory experiences of toxicity visually.
