Endometriosis and Environmental Violence

Abstract

Abstract This toxic autobiography seeks to open the conversation around the intersecting injustices marking the epistemological, material, political, and porous entanglements between endometriosis, the bodily inflammatory chronic condition the author is affected by, and the toxic waste fires raging in the territory known as the Land of Fires, between the provinces of Naples and Caserta, in southern Italy. Thinking with the sprouting intersection of environmental humanities and disability justice, while rooted in a critical environmental justice and transfeminist standpoint, the article uncovers the toxic embodiment where bodies and places are enmeshed. Although a growing body of literature acknowledges the role of chemical buildup and endocrine-disrupting toxins in the occurrence of endometriosis, the author delineates the epistemic injustices that 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 about. While emerging from the materiality of experiencing trauma and pain, the article reclaims the emancipatory possibilities that can be articulated. From the politicization of an “invisible” illness standpoint, the article proposes a toxic autobiography in which transfeminist, environmental, and disability justice politics are collectively affirmed through situated ecopolitics of response-ability that accounts for interdependence and self-determination of marginal bodies and territories.