The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan Damage, with Dustin Edwards
Apr 28, 2025
Dustin Edwards, associate professor and rhetoric scholar, dives deep into the environmental and social impacts of digital infrastructure. He explores the damage caused by data centers and mining, highlighting ethical storytelling and colonial histories. The conversation touches on the complex interplay between masculinity, labor, and technology, as well as the need for a decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist lens in academia. Edwards urges a shift towards human-centric values in an increasingly data-driven world, calling for mindfulness and resistance to datafication.
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Grappling With Imperfect Frameworks
- Dustin Edwards intentionally works with imperfect scholarly frameworks to confront settler colonial harms.
- He refuses to outright reject new materialism and post-humanism, instead grappling with their embedded histories.
Childhood Tied to Expanding Mine
- Dustin Edwards grew up near one of the largest copper mines in the US and witnessed its expansion firsthand.
- Childhood memories with his sister around the smokestacks blend fondness with awareness of community health impacts.
Kneeling Nun Reveals Colonial Violence
- Dustin reads and narrates the Kneeling Nun geological formation to reveal settler colonial violence and renaming.
- These local myths conceal histories of dispossession tied to the copper mine and settler imperialism.
