![]() ![]() This form of re-emerging can also assume the form of re-evaluation which can result in attempts of commodification of discarded objects as valuable artifacts for mass consumption (Thompson 2017).Īs scholars in the field of Discard Studies have recently pointed out, the connotations of unwanted visibility are not limited to material things, but are also used to classify cultural practices, places, and even humans (Liboiron and Lepawsky 2022). ![]() Trash re-emerges as kitsch in aesthetic contexts, re-circulating within the realm of commercial or popular taste through reworked media artifacts, thereby complicating the notion of invisibility by never disappearing in the first place. However, trash does not always submit to these processes but instead subverts expectations. Things classified as ‘trash’ have no other task than to become invisible in the spheres of civilized living-they are thrown out. Trash, in fact, is a historically specific category and by no means an anthropological constant (Laguardia 2008). At the same time, trash itself can be conceptualized as a nonhuman agent entering into entanglements with significant and wide-ranging influence (Armiero 2021, Bennett 2010).Įxamining the relationship between material culture and trash provides new perspectives on how cultural values and attitudes towards objects change over time. In its materiality as in its implication in socio-economic inequality, trash has different impacts on marginalized spaces (Quintanilla 2020 Squire 2014). As these cycles become more and more globalized, new inequalities arise (Laser and Schlitz 2022). The cyclical nature of trash represents a consistent challenge for societies as well as local communities and neighborhoods, especially in terms of recycling systems, landfill sites, and overall waste management practices. Plastic, for instance, has become almost synonymous with the pervasiveness of trash (Davis 2022). This is based on the underlying belief that the material basis for (re)production is no longer an issue. Trash usually denotes the material traces of excess and overflow. By this logic, it may also uncover ideological demarcations and processes of exclusion which do not affect only the discarded objects, but also marginalized groups living in geographical and societal peripheries (Nixon 2011). Read as an epistemic concept, the notion of trash carries heuristic potential as an analytical tool for the study of culture. Yet, trash proliferates in the realms of aesthetics, communication, and media and it is also undeniably associated with social and economic spheres. The concept of trash is highly polysemous: on the one hand, trash is intimately tied to the materiality of waste, garbage, recycling, overproduction, and disposal (Moisi 2016 2020). With the 17th issue of On_Culture, we seek to address the question of how trash haunts the different material, societal, and cultural realms from which it has once been discarded. Guest Editors: Marco Presago, Juliane Saupe, Tobias Schädel ![]() Call for Abstracts for Issue 17 (Autumn 2024) ![]()
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