BLOG - David Giles, Britt Halvorson, Joshua Reno, and Trang X. Ta. 2015. "Emergent Socialities of Waste." Discard Studies

Social, political, and economic orders inevitably value time, space, and life differentially. Even hierarchically. The (de)valorization and (dis)avowal of lives, spaces, and persons are not incidental, but mutually give rise to emergent socialities. The following collection of essays takes its cues from the work of George Bataille, who suggested that life itself cannot but multiply and expand into those spaces left abandoned, taking on novel forms in the process. What new sorts of life, value, and politics are enabled in these exceptional spaces? As the excesses, effluents, and excreta of larger social spheres are discarded, discounted, and possibly denigrated, what happens at those margins where they recirculate? What fissures in prevailing circulatory structures might we uncover, and how do people appropriate the myriad of social and material utility that persists therein? What unexpected material and social transformations might we find there, and what can they teach us about the way people reckon time and value? We explore the ways in which the materialities of waste, rubbish, refuse, debris, castoffs, and pollution enable new forms of sociality marked by generative practices of survival, adaptation, and critique.