New Book Explores Ecological Violence as Racialized Environmental Control

A new academic work, "The Elsewhere Is Black: Ecological Violence and Improvised Life," by Marisa Solomon, an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, is set to be released by Duke University Press on September 30, 2025. The book introduces a critical perspective on environmental injustice, asserting that "ecological violence is a form of racialized heteropatriarchal environmental control that upholds whiteness as a propertied way of life and criminalizes Black survival." This central argument, highlighted in a recent tweet by Rona Dinur, underscores the systemic nature of environmental degradation impacting marginalized communities.

Solomon's research delves into how waste infrastructures disproportionately concentrate environmental risks in historically Black spaces, using examples from Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant to Virginia’s Tidewater region. The book posits that the devaluation of land and life in these areas is intrinsically linked to broader issues of poisoning, police violence, dispossession, and poverty, effectively holding Black life captive. This framework challenges conventional environmentalism by foregrounding the unique eco-political imaginations that emerge from Black un/freedom amidst the daily accumulation of waste.

"The Elsewhere Is Black" aims to open new ecological horizons by questioning the forms of environmentalism that arise when Black existence has never been separate from the concept of waste. The work is positioned as a significant intervention into the "Black ecological condition," offering insights into Black disposability and resilience within late US capitalism's Anthropocenic environments. The publication by Duke University Press, known for its scholarly contributions to critical theory and social sciences, further emphasizes the academic rigor and relevance of Solomon's analysis.