Collectively cultivating the pleasures of interembodiment: Waste labor, nuclearity, and river love in Bulgaria

How do people cultivate and share pleasure while navigating environments that might also be killing them? This article explores the role of interembodied networks and collaborations in contexts of environmental degradation and presumed risk. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Bulgaria, I focus on how these networks take shape among: (1) Romani women waste workers in Sofia and (2) white Bulgarian residents living near two sites of nuclearity: the still operating Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant and the abandoned Belene Nuclear Power Plant, both situated along the Danube River. In sites of potential toxicity, risk, and infrastructural deterioration, I trace how people forge interembodied relationships that are not only life-sustaining but, at times, also sources of pleasure.