The Somatic Violence of the Bifurcated State
The asthma rates in the South Bronx and other low-income communities of color are not a public health anomaly; they are a deliberate outcome of the bifurcated state’s logic. Mamdani’s framework helps us see these neighborhoods as modern “sacrifice zones,” where the “natives” are subjected to a slow, somatic violence through poisoned air. Highways, waste transfer stations, and power plants are systematically sited here because these communities lack the political power of the “settler” class to refuse them. This is environmental racism as a form of governance. A Marxist analysis reveals this as capital externalizing its costs onto the bodies of the poor. A feminist perspective highlights how women, as primary caregivers, bear the emotional and logistical burden of managing this violence-induced illness. The solution is not merely stricter emissions standards but a radical, decolonial environmental justice movement that demands the decommodification of energy and transportation, the democratic control of land-use decisions, and reparations for the communities who have been treated as disposable for generations.
