Table Of ContentAsbestos – 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 com-
munity, 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’, copy-
right © 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 arti-
cle 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 sup-
port, despite my absences (and many, many references to asbestos), to Luna
ix
