Table Of Content

Asbestos – the LAst Modernist object Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture Series Editors: Tim Armstrong and Rebecca Beasley Available Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult Leigh Wilson Sonic Modernity: Representing Sound in Literature, Culture and the Arts Sam Halliday Modernism and the Frankfurt School Tyrus Miller Lesbian Modernism: Censorship, Sexuality and Genre Fiction Elizabeth English Modern Print Artefacts: Textual Materiality and Literary Value in British Print Culture, 1890–1930s Patrick Collier Cheap Modernism: Expanding Markets, Publishers’ Series and the Avant-Garde Lise Jaillant Portable Modernisms: The Art of Travelling Light Emily Ridge Hieroglyphic Modernisms: Writing and New Media in the Twentieth Century Jesse Schotter Modernism, Fiction and Mathematics Nina Engelhardt Modernist Life Histories: Biological Theory and the Experimental Bildungsroman Daniel Aureliano Newman Modernism, Space and the City: Outsiders and Affect in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and London Andrew Thacker Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine Victoria Bazin Modernism and Time Machines Charles Tung Primordial Modernism: Animals, Ideas, Transition (1927–1938) Cathryn Setz Modernism and Still Life: Artists, Writers, Dancers Claudia Tobin The Modernist Exoskeleton: Insects, War, Literary Form Rachel Murray Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia Jon Day Hotel Modernity: Corporate Space in Literature and Film Robbie Moore The Modernist Anthropocene: Nonhuman Life and Planetary Change in James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes Peter Adkins Asbestos – The Last Modernist Object Arthur Rose Forthcoming Modernism and the Idea of Everyday Life Leena Kore-Schröder Modernism and Religion: Poetry and the Rise of Mysticism Jamie Callison Abstraction in Modernism and Modernity: Human and Inhuman Jeff Wallace Visionary Company: Hart Crane and Modernist Periodicals Francesca Bratton Sexological Modernism: Queer Feminism and Sexual Science Jana Funke The Modernist Long Poem: Gnosticism, the First World War and the Sympathetic Imagination Jamie Wood www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ecsmc Asbestos – the LAst Modernist object Arthur rose For John and Dorothy Rose And Arthur, Alan, Peter, Jimmy. . . Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com We are committed to making research available to a wide audience and are pleased to be publishing an Open Access ebook edition of this title. © Arthur Rose 2022 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial licence Cover image: “Johns-Manville building - Asbestos mural” New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935–1945. Cover design: www.hayesdesign.co.uk Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12.5 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 8242 4 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 8244 8 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 8245 5 (epub) The right of Arthur Rose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). contents List of Figures vi Acknowledgements vii Series Editors’ Preface xi Preface: What’s the Use of Writing about Asbestos? xii Introduction: Asbestos and Modernism 1 Part I: Prefiguring Asbestos 1 A Utopian Impulse 41 2 Clues and Mysteries 59 Part II: Configuring Asbestos 3 Salamander Cotton 87 4 Illness Narratives 107 5 Compensating for Franz Kafka 127 Part III: Transforming Asbestos 6 The Mine 155 7 The Factory 175 8 The Home 202 Conclusion: The Dump 222 Bibliography 230 Index 250 List of figures 0.1 Arriving in the Cabin 20 0.2 The Asbestos Roll 20 0.3 Donning the Asbestos Suit 20 0.4 Explanatory Intertitle 22 7.1 The Mining and Transport of Raw Asbestos (© the Heath Robinson Museum) 182 7.2 Patent double action grinder (© the Heath Robinson Museum) 182 7.3 Mixing treated asbestos fibre with cement (© the Heath Robinson Museum) 183 7.4 Powerful machinery (© the Heath Robinson Museum) 183 7.5 In the finishing departments (© the Heath Robinson Museum) 184 8.1 Lady Asbestos 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 François 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 Founda- tion), 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 conse- quences 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 Asbestos – the LAst Modernist object 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, Zoë 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 Eng- lish. 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, Niccolò 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 semi- nars. 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 ix