The Idea of Waste
On the Limits of Human Life
John ScanlanAn exploration of both the reality and the spectre of waste throughout history.
The Idea of Waste starts with the premise that waste is inevitable in human society. It explores how we have grappled with both the material reality and the spectre of this shape-shifting phenomenon throughout history – utilizing it, dreaming of overcoming it, yet never escaping it. John Scanlan investigates what waste is and why it seems to be intrinsic to human life, at every turn, in every age and epoch. He demonstrates how waste never disappears completely but rather only proliferates anew. The compelling narrative shows waste to be both an enduring material consequence of human activity and an idea or state of being.
An exploration of both the reality and the spectre of waste throughout history.
The Idea of Waste starts with the premise that waste is inevitable in human society. It explores how we have grappled with both the material reality and the spectre of this shape-shifting phenomenon throughout history – utilizing it, dreaming of overcoming it, yet never escaping it. John Scanlan investigates what waste is and why it seems to be intrinsic to human life, at every turn, in every age and epoch. He demonstrates how waste never disappears completely but rather only proliferates anew. The compelling narrative shows waste to be both an enduring material consequence of human activity and an idea or state of being.
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In The Idea of Waste, John Scanlan has produced yet another valuable think piece about ‘what waste is and what it has been’. ‘It is about how we have lived with waste,’ he asserts, ‘made use of it as a thing or idea, and dreamt of escaping or conquering its negative effects once and for all.’ As usual, Scanlan offers a lot to chew on in this new book in a field that has seen amazing growth in recent years.
'Martin V. Melosi, author of the award-winning Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City
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John Scanlan's new book reads like a historical and cultural anthropology of waste. It is an expansive excavation of the cultural middens – material, conceptual and virtual – of Western civilization. Drawing on works of politics, literature, industry, history, architecture and film, he reveals how waste occupies an ambiguous and shifting space between life (that which sustains, enriches and nourishes) and death (that which threatens, endangers or signifies disaster). Scanlan positions waste as central to our historical, cultural and existential fabric, taking us from the ancient sewers of Rome and medieval London, through Nadar’s documentation of Paris’s subterranean sewers to Walter Benjamin’s fascination with commodities and ruins, and from nuclear repositories and ecological wastelands to the digital detritus of our present moment.
'Peter C. van Wyck, Professor of Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, and author of Signs of Danger: Waste, Trauma, and Nuclear Threat
Introduction: Waste Is Life Plus Minus
1 Matter: Sewers, Filth and Sanitarians
2 Objects: Consume, Accumulate, Destroy
3 Resources: Reclaim, Recover, Recycle
4 Aesthetics: Designing and Dematerializing
5 Projections: Wastelands, Real and Imagined
6 Temporalities: Deep, Infinite and Meaningless
Conclusion: Data Wastelands
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
John Scanlan is a cultural historian and analyst who works with In Certain Places, a public art project based at the University of Lancashire. His previous books include On Garbage (2005), Memory: Encounters with the Strange and the Familiar (2013) and Rock ’n’ Roll Plays Itself (2022), all published by Reaktion Books.
