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mode of economic activity.^136 In Seveso, it was a combination of cost-
cutting measures and corporate dissimulation that turned the "accident"
intoadisaster,theEuropeanCommissionfound("TheSevesoDirective
-Prevention,PreparednessandResponse").
Cases like the Seveso incident are therefore critical sites for a
political economy reading of disability, which aims at bringing
environmental factors that compromise human health into an explicit
articulation with the transnational economic order. My reference text
here is a piece of fiction, Indra Sinha'sAnimal's People(2007). I have
chosen the novel because it places the disabling force of environmental
catastrophessquarelyintothecontextoftransnationalcapitalismandits
globalagents,andthusanchorsthecontingenciesofhumanembodiment
in a systemic framework. The novel has received international
acknowledgement; it was a Booker Prize finalist, and has in the
meantime been showcased in the emergent field of postcolonial
ecocriticism.^137 The narrative is a thinly disguised fictional re-telling of
oneoftheworstindustrialaccidentsinhistory,the1984Bhopaldisaster
in India,when a UnionCarbideplantblew up andreleased 27 tonsofa
poisonous chemical fog into the air killing more than 9,000 people
immediately and leaving many others physically or psychologically
disabled.^138 Even many years after that catastrophe, people continue to
(^136) For a stringent reading of the ideology of the accident in these contexts cf.
Massumi,"National Enterprise Emergency: Steps Towards an Ecology of
Powers,"esp.25-33.
(^137) Cf. Mukherjee, Pablo. "'Tomorrow There Will Be More of Us': Toxic
Postcoloniality in Animal's People."Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the
Environment. Ed. Elizabeth Deloughrey and George Handley. Oxford: Oxford
UP,2011.216-31.Print.
(^138) Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, never publicly
acknowledged its responsibility for the disaster; its executives dodged criminal
proceedings in India while the United States refused to extradite them. Only
limitedamountsofcompensationwerepaidouttovictimsorthefamilies;much
of the money was lost to corrupt local functionaries. My narrative of the events
is based on Sarangi, Satinath. "Crimes of Bhopal and the Global Campaign for
Justice."SocialJustice3 (2002): 47-52. Print.; Lapierre, Dominique, and Javier
Moro.Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest