"Toxic Discourse"

The term, coined by Lawrence Buell, refers to a burgeoning “cultural genre” related to toxicity and contamination. Toxic discourse, Buell argues, contains four criteria: “a mythography of betrayed Edens,” “totalizing images of a world without refuge from toxic penetration,” “the threat of hegemonic oppression,” and the “gothicization of squalor and pollution characteristic of the environmental exposé” (639-665).