The biopower of ignorance: Individualizing blame for lead poisoning in Kabwe Zambia

Within research on late liberal biopolitics, scholars have examined the individualization of public or collective dangers, such as the obesity epidemic, natural disasters, and climate change. Yet few have scrutinized the most audacious of cases: when the government participated in and benefited from the destruction of its land and poisoning of its people, and then, rather than admit culpability, turns around to blame their citizens' ill health on their individual behavior. In this article, I investigate lead contamination in Kabwe, Zambia a former lead mining town and one of the 10 most polluted cities in the world. I argue ignorance, not just knowledge, can be a technology of governing: a strategic way for the government to manage their population and “let die.” Drawing upon 48 qualitative interviews with mine, government, and civil society insiders along with eight resident focus groups, this article scrutinizes how government secrecy gave way to three talking points that frame conversations about the environment in Kabwe—that lead contamination is natural, that lead poisoning is easily preventable, and that it is treatable. With this narrative, education campaigns actively produce ignorance about the causes and consequences of widespread lead poisoning, continually turning poisoning events and happenings into quasi-events, or states of being residents are left to endure.