Thursday 17th October 2024: 4.00-5.15pm (IST – Irish Standard Time/DST/BST): Online lecture
Ilenia Iengo (Independent Researcher)
The inflamed body-territory. An Environmental Justice, Transfeminist, and Crip praxis from the Southern European city of Naples, Italy
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/eco-humanities-public-lecture-17-october-2024-tickets-1005134994827
The presentation centres an autoethnographic immersion in “Terra dei Fuochi”, southern Italy, zooming into the intersecting injustices marking the experience of endometriosis, the bodily inflammatory chronic illness I live with and the toxic waste fires raging in the territory between the provinces of Naples and Caserta. Thinking with the sprouting intersection of environmental humanities and crip studies and disability justice, while rooted in a critical environmental justice and transfeminist standpoint, the epistemic justice exercise uncovers the toxic embodiment where bodies and places are enmeshed. Although a growing body of literature acknowledges the role of chemical and endocrine-disrupting toxins buildup in the occurrence of endometriosis, I delineate the epistemic injustices which keep this relationship silent in mainstream medical discourses. Through the blend of environmental memoir, embodied knowledge, activist campaigns, and medical literature, the article exposes the accumulation of environmental, medical, ableist, misogynist and capitalist slow violence, that living with endometriosis brings forth. While emerging from the materiality of experiencing trauma and pain, the chapter reclaims the emancipatory possibilities which can be articulated. From the politicization of an “invisible” illness standpoint, the paper proposes a toxic autobiography where transfeminist, environmental and disability justice politics are collectively affirmed through situated ecopolitics of response-ability that account for interdependence and self-determination of marginal bodies and territories.
Ilenia Iengo holds a PhD in Feminist Political Ecology, developed as part of the WEGO-ITN Marie Sklodowska-Curie PhD at BCNUEJ, Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. She is a chronically ill scholar-activist from Naples, southern Italy, and is also a member of the Ecologie Politiche del Presente laboratory and Undisciplined Environments collective. Her work lies at the crossroad of environmental humanities, transfeminist political ecology, and disability justice engaging with toxicity, embodiment, and prefigurative urban politics.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/eco-humanities-public-lecture-17-october-2024-tickets-1005134994827