Asbestos – The Last Modernist Object

Front matter

edinburg| deist culture

NOC MA Vise

MODERNIST

Part III: Transforming Asbestos 6 The Mine 7 The Factory 8 The Home

Conclusion: The Dump

Bibliography Index

107 127

230 250

7.4 72 8.1

LIST OF FIGURES

Arriving in the Cabin

The Asbestos Roll Donning the Asbestos Suit Explanatory Intertitle

The Mining and Transport of Raw Asbestos (O the Heath Robinson Museum)

Patent double action grinder (O the Heath Robinson Museum)

Mixing treated asbestos fibre with cement (O the Heath Robinson Museum)

Powerful machinery (O the Heath Robinson Museum) In the finishing departments (O the Heath Robinson Museum) Lady Asbestos

20 20 20 22

182 182

183 183 184 213

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The longer a book takes to write, the longer the list of people whose kind and patient contributions make it possible to bring that writing to a close. But all books begin somewhere, and this one undoubtedly began as a conversation with my father, Peter Rose, that extended over two site visits to Koegas in the Northern Cape and Pomfret in the North West in 2015 and 2019. Without his enthusiastic support of this project, I would never have persevered with it. He also introduced me to Sonja and Ruan Immelman, Jim te Water Naudé, Gill Nelson and Frangois Loots, who gave generously of their time to talk to me about asbestos exposure in South Africa. Equally generous were Kate Hill at the June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund, Helen Clayson (formerly at the University of Sheffield), Bev Wears (formerly of the British Lung Foundation), Chris Knighton at the Mick Knighton Mesothelioma Research Fund, Nick Mansell and Rahul Bhatnagar at the University of Bristol, and Jo Barnes- Mannings and Lorna Johns at Asbestos Awareness and Support Cymru, who each contributed to my understanding of mesothelioma in the United Kingdom. Through them, I met the people whose ongoing engagement with the consequences of asbestos exposure gives this book its moral purpose.

Still, a book like this does not emerge from moral purpose alone. I was lucky to receive support from the Wellcome Trust and the University of Bristol for the research and writing up phases of the project. As a postdoctoral research fellow on the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award Life of Breath at Durham University, I had the privilege of working with Jane Macnaughton, vii without whose mentoring hand I doubt I would have had the courage to write this book, and Mary Robson, who knew the right questions to ask and when to ask them. I was also supported by an amazing team of interdisciplinary researchers on the project, including Havi Carel, Krzysztof Bierski, Kate Binnie, Jordan Collver, James Dodd, Gene Feder, David Fuller, Alice Malpass, Coreen McGuire, Sarah McLusky, Fredrik Nyman, Rebecca Oxley, Corinne Saunders, Andrew Russell, Megan Wainwright, Oriana Walker, Tina Williams and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim. In the wider Durham community, I owe more than passing debts to Ben Alderson-Day and Helen Sanger, Marco Bernini, Sam Bootle, Marc Botha, Dan Grausam, Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián, Kerstin Oloff, Alastair Renfrew, Zoé Roth, Marc Schachter, Hugh and Lotte Shankland, Rick de Villiers and Michelle Joubert, and Angela Woods. A special word must be given to Will Viney, who provided a model for this book that I completely failed to follow. As a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at Bristol, I was fortunate to have Maria Vaccarella as an engaging mentor and a committed interlocutor. Ulrika Maude generously stepped up to the role as well. Andrew Bennett, Andrew Blades, Lesel Dawson, Helen Fulton, Cleo Hanaway-Oakley, John Lee, Laurence Publicover and Kirk Sides were considerate colleagues in English. Members of the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science, Victoria Bates, Havi Carel and Giovanni Biglino, gave me an interdisciplinary community, while Colin Nolden and Eleni Michalopoulou were a constant source of transdisciplinary insights. Claire Wrixon, Rachel Dill and the Fellows from the 2017, 2018 and 2019 cohorts offered help at every turn, personal as well as professional. I am particularly indebted to Ryan Davey, Daniel Finch-Race, Tigist Grieve and Liz Haines for their regular check-ins. In Exeter, Gemma Anderson, Lara Choksey, Michael Flexer, Robin Jakob, Ina Linge, Laura Salisbury, Niccolo Tempini and Dóra Vargha all contributed greatly.

I am grateful to many people for their help in accessing various materials. Ken Yates and the University of Leeds Special Collections helped me source a copy of his play, Dust. Alice Nutter sent me a copy of her play, Snow in August. The Amazwi South African Museum of Literature helped me trawl through South Africa’s literary archive. Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/ Special Collections Library sourced work by Rick Bass for me in the middle of a pandemic. Yolanda Wisher allowed me to make use of her work in progress. Jo Barnes-Mannings from the AASC let me use one of her poems. Muireann Maguire put me in contact with Yekaterina Severts, who introduced me to the work of Pavel Bazhov and Semen Schepachev. Geoffrey Beare provided high resolution copies of William Heath Robinson’s Asbestos Cement illustrations (photos © the Heath Robinson Museum).

Will Viney, Maria Vaccarella and Maebh Long provided endless fonts of asbestos references.

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I was fortunate to try out some of the ideas at some conferences and seminars. Thanks go to the following for inviting me: Simon van Schalkwyk, Merle Williams and Michael Titlestad for inviting me to present at the University of the Witwatersrand, first at the staff seminar and then at the conference, Cultures of Populism. Thando Njovane and Mike Marais, who offered space at the staff seminar in the institution currently known as Rhodes University. Rick de Villiers, who brought me to the staff seminar at the University of the Free State. Madhu Krishnan and Andrew Blades, for having me at the staff seminar at the University of Bristol. Stefanie Heine, for letting me give a class on her mineral aesthetics course at the University of Zurich. Kasia Mika, for involving me in the ASCA Cities Project at the University of Amsterdam. Jean Michel Rabaté and Aaron Levy, for giving me time at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. David Watson, for including me in the Crisis and Beyond Conference at the University of Uppsala. Michael Flexer, for involving me in an Engaged Research Workshop at the University of Exeter.

Special thanks to the people who helped me to turn my scattered ideas into something approaching a cogent written form. At Edinburgh University Press, Ersev Ersoy and Susannah Butler provided constant support for the project, Fiona Conn ably managed its production and Caitlin Murphy was responsible for the fitting cover design. Aidan Cross provided excellent copy-editing. Peter Rose, Rick de Villiers and Stefanie Heine read through the draft manuscript in its entirety, as did my editors, Rebecca Beasley and Tim Armstrong. Maria Vaccarella, Ryan Topper, Michelle Rada and Kasia Mika each read key chapters at key moments. When asked, Doug Battersby dropped everything to help me restructure ungainly paragraphs. I also benefitted greatly from comments from Sam Durrant, Philip Dickinson and two anonymous reviewers on a version of Chapter Three, and from comments on a version of Chapter Five by Bruce Holsinger and an anonymous reviewer. Through all this, my errors remained my own. I am grateful to the editors of New Formations and Lawrence Wishart for permission to reprint ‘Asbestos’s Animacy; or, Salamander Cotton’, copyright © 2021 New Formations, Lawrence Wishart. This article first appeared in New Formations Number 104-5, Autumn/Winter 2021, pages 105-27. I am grateful to the editors of New Literary History and Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to reprint “Recovering Franz Kafka’s Asbestos Factory”, copyright © 2022 New Literary History, The University of Virginia. This article first appeared in New Literary History Volume 52, Issue 4, 2022.

As anyone in the habit of reading acknowledgements knows, books such as these owe an unspeakable debt to the writer’s family. This is no exception. Sarah, Sean, Seb and Sam provided light and laughter, as did other members of my extended family. But a special debt is owed for continued love and support, despite my absences (and many, many references to asbestos), to Luna and Theo, and for so much more than I can possibly say. They accepted, with much forbearance, my need to make sense of my family’s asbestos past. If what results is not quite a reckoning of my family’s history, I hope this book goes some way to thinking about the cultural context that gave it sense. It is only fitting, then, that it be dedicated to my father, grandfather, grandmother and uncles, whose stories inspired it.

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture Series Editors: Tim Armstrong and Rebecca Beasley