Spatial Justice and Environmental Racism in Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex
Datum
2018-09-06
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University of Oregon
Zusammenfassung
I examine Sesshu Foster’s 2005 alternate history speculative fiction narrative Atomik Aztex using geographer Edward Soja’s concept of “spatial (in)justice” as an analytical lens, arguing Foster focuses on mobility and its links to transportation justice that emerge through a spatial injustice lens. Moreover, I argue Foster simultaneously criticizes effects of racial capitalism on the urban population of Los Angeles. As geographer Laura Pulido and others argue, these spatial processes both create and reflect material differences in urban space and between populations as part of a valuation system in which pollution and poverty can be allocated into the paths of least resistance: devalued, racialized populations. By providing a distorted alternate reality so similar to ours, Foster represents social justice issues stemming from racial capitalism and its resulting projects of environmental racism.