Death’s Capital: Urban Poor Political Ecology and the Aesthetics of Salvaging by the Nightcrawlers of Manila

Jose Kervin Cesar B. CALABIAS

doi:10.1007/978-981-19-1130-9_7

Death’s Capital: Urban Poor Political Ecology and the Aesthetics of Salvaging by the Nightcrawlers of Manila

Jose Kervin Cesar B. CALABIAS^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Lingnan University

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference Proceedings › Book Chapter › Research › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Through an ecocritical analysis of the practice of photography by the Nightcrawlers of Manila, this chapter describes an urban poor political ecology under Duterte’s Oplan Tokhang that ensues along with his government’s other urban spatial policies/strategies of containing, excluding, and expelling the urban poor that have made them more vulnerable as targets of the drug war and its documentation. This violent urban metabolism has rendered/(pre)disposed the body of the urban poor into “waste/garbage,” the material-discursive products cities are known for, and where the Nightcrawlers inevitably transform their “stylized” deaths into images of the abject aesthetic of salvaging. Salvaging signifies not just the manner of killing but the interrelated livelihoods of the urban poor subject and the photographer, placing “death” as the precondition of urban living and the center of photographic practice in the Age of the Necrocene.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Environment, Media, and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia
Editors	Jason Paolo TELLES, John Charles RYAN, Jeconiah Louis DREISBACH
Publisher	Springer Singapore
Pages	119-133
Number of pages	15
ISBN (Electronic)	9789811911309
ISBN (Print)	9789811911293
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1130-9_7
Publication status	Published - 1 Jun 2022

Publication series

Name	Asia in Transition
Volume	17
ISSN (Print)	2364-8252
ISSN (Electronic)	2364-8260

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

Keywords

Oplan Tokhang
Urban political ecology
Necrocene
Ecocriticism
Nightcrawlers of Manila
Photography

Access to Document

10.1007/978-981-19-1130-9_7

Cite this

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Death’s Capital: Urban Poor Political Ecology and the Aesthetics of Salvaging by the Nightcrawlers of Manila. / CALABIAS, Jose Kervin Cesar B.
Environment, Media, and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia. ed. / Jason Paolo TELLES; John Charles RYAN; Jeconiah Louis DREISBACH. Springer Singapore, 2022. p. 119-133 (Asia in Transition; Vol. 17).

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference Proceedings › Book Chapter › Research › peer-review

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Death’s Capital: Urban Poor Political Ecology and the Aesthetics of Salvaging by the Nightcrawlers of Manila

Abstract

Publication series

Bibliographical note

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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