The Proletarian Lung: fighting waste colonialism in Bosnia and Herzegovina- Lab meeting with Damir Arsenijevic

Ever since the war against socialist Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been the target of predatory international capital and local nationalist aspirations to extract profit, in perpetuity, from the natural and human resources of the country. Under so-called ‘waste colonialism’, these nationalists are ‘weaponizing’ pollution to exacerbate poverty. Waste colonialism leaves toxic waste, buried in hidden sites, in the wake of the asset-stripping of factories. This now poisons water, air, and soil, rendering communities expendable, desensitized, and vulnerable to market exploitation.

What genres are at our disposal in the humanities to make visible the inseparability of environmental instability, finance capital, violence, and power? How can this enable war-traumatised, exhausted, and further impoverished communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to imagine and enact fight for environmental justice as a genuinely socially transformative fight?

Format: 15 min presentation + 45 min of discussion.