“Vanishing Points”: Climate Witnessing at the End of the Earth

Bond, L. 2025. “Vanishing Points”: Climate Witnessing at the End of the Earth. Memory Studies Review.

Title“Vanishing Points”: Climate Witnessing at the End of the Earth
TypeJournal article
AuthorsBond, L.
Abstract

Focusing on heritage and tourism practices on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, this article explores the ethical challenges of witnessing vanishing landscapes and cultures in the era of climate change. Land in South Louisiana is disappearing at the rate of one football field every 38 minutes; the erosion is so intense that cartographers have begun to remove place names from maps. This process is a direct result of evolving modalities of racial capitalism that have targeted indigenous and minoritized communities since the origins of settler-colonialism. Today, this violent past is echoed in the development of major on- and off-shore oil infrastructure, which has both visible and invisible effects on socioecological life: displacing Native, Cajun, and Black communities, toxifying waterways and airways, and destroying the region’s unique wetlands. However, this reality is absent from the mainstream tourist narrative, which continues to celebrate the ‘authenticity’ of the natural and cultural landscapes that are in decline.

KeywordsEnvironmental racism
climate witnessing
climate change
anthropocene
racial capitalism
violence
heritage
tourism
JournalMemory Studies Review
ISSN2949-8902
Year2025
PublisherBrill
Accepted author manuscript
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
ProjectProcessing Memory: Heritage, Industry, and Environmental Racism in the American Gulf States [Led by KCL]
FunderBA (British Academy)

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