Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move

In Glyphosate and the Swirl Vincanne Adams explores the chemical glyphosatethe active ingredient in Roundup and a pervasive agricultural herbicideas a predicament of contested science and chemically saturated life. Adams traces the history of glyphosates invention and its multiple uses as activists, regulators, scientists, clinicians, consumers, and sick people try to determine its safety and harm. Scientific and political debates over glyphosates toxicity are agitated into a swirla condition in which certainty is continually contested, divided, and multiplied. This movement replicates the chemicals movement in soils, foods, bodies, archives, labs, and legislative bodies, settling in some places here and in other places there, its potencies changing and altering what it touches with different scales and kinds of impact. The swirl is both an artifact of academic capitalism, activist tactics, and contested scientific facts and a way to capture the complexity of contemporary life with chemicals. See more