Toward a New Theory of Waste: from "Matter Out of Place" to Signs of Life
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Issue Date
2014-09-23
Authors
Reno, Joshua
Publisher
Theory, Culture & Society
Keywords
embodiment , excess , life , pollution , posthuman , semiotics , waste , bio-semiotics
Abstract
This paper offers a counterpoint to the prevailing account of waste in the human
sciences. This account identifies waste, firstly, as the anomalous product of arbitrary
social categorizations, or ‘matter out of place’, and, secondly, as a distinctly human
way of leaving behind and interpreting traces, or a mirror of culture. Together, these
positions reflect a more or less constructivist and anthropocentric approach. Most
commonly, waste is placed within a framework that privileges considerations of
meaning over materiality and the threat of death over the perpetuity of life processes.
For an alternative I turn to bio-semiotics and cross-species scholarship
around the question of the animal. Specifically, the paper asks what theories of
waste would look like if instead of taking ‘dirt’ as their starting point, they began
with trans-species encounters with animal scat. Following bio-semiotics and efforts
to deconstruct the animal/human binary, it is suggested that the objectual forms
commonly referred to as ‘waste’ are not arbitrarily classified but purposefully
expended, and thus symptomatic of life’s spatio-temporal continuation. Waste
matter, therefore, is best construed not as anthropocentric but as semi-biotic: a
sign of the form of life to which it once belonged. This alternative perspective has
implications for how approaches to industrial forms of mass waste can be
reconceived.