The Literature of Waste : Material Ecopoetics and Ethical Matter

Tracing material and metaphoric waste through the Western canon, ranging from __Beowulf__ to Samuel Beckett, Susan Morrison disrupts traditional perceptions of waste to better understand how we theorize, manage, and are implicated in what is discarded and seen as garbage. Engaging a wide range of disciplines, Morrison addresses how the materiality of waste has been sedimented into a variety of toxic metaphors. The vibrancy of matter itself disturbs these metaphors, especially those used to characterize people as disposable garbage. If scholars can read waste as possessing dynamic agency, how might that change the ethics of refuse-ing and ostracizing wasted humans? A major contribution to the growing field of Waste Studies, this comparative and theoretically innovative book confronts the reader with the ethical urgency present in waste literature itself. Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Permissions 14 Introduction The Waste-ern Literary Canon in the Waste-ern Tradition 16 PART I Treatment and Disposal: Approaches to Disciplining Waste 30 CHAPTER 1 Codification: The Anxiety of Ambiguity 32 CHAPTER 2 The Fragmented and Corruptible Body: Gendered Waste 44 CHAPTER 3 The Civilizing Process: Divisive Divisions 60 CHAPTER 4 Memory and Narrative: Ruins, Nostalgia, and Ghosts 70 CHAPTER 5 Failed Source Reduction: Conspicuous Consumption and the Inability to Minimize 80 CHAPTER 6 Urban Myths: The Civilized and Pristine City-Body 90 CHAPTER 7 Interiorized Waste: Sin and Metaphysical Meaninglessness 100 CHAPTER 8 The Toxic Metaphor of Wasted Humans: 112 PART II Energy Recovery and the Dynamic Power of Things 134 CHAPTER 9 The Secret Life of Objects: 136 CHAPTER 10 Trash Meditation: 154 PART III Recycling and Composting: Form as Restitution 164 CHAPTER 11 Waste Aesthetics: Puns, Litter-ature,* and Intertextuality 166 CHAPTER 12 Gleaning Aesthetics: Poetry as Communal Salvage 180 PART IV Source Reduction and Reuse: Compassion through Generous Metaphor 186 CHAPTER 13 Compost Aesthetics: The Poet[h]ics of Metaphor 188 CHAPTER 14 Poetry as Homeopathy: The Poet as Ragpicker 194 Notes 216 Bibliography 286 Index 316 "Establishing the field of Waste Studies, a material ecocritical approach, The Literature of Waste traces literal and figurative waste in the western canon. The materiality of waste - as in landfills, trashcans, garbage dumps, compost piles - inevitably transforms into metaphor. Waste emerges out of various disciplines, such as anthropological codification, psychological repression of bodily decay, sociological civilizing process, historical garbaging of the past, economic conspicuous consumption, urban disposal of bodily waste, religious sin, and philosophical angst. Vibrant materialism disturbs the use of the metaphor of waste used to characterize people as disposable garbage. If we can read waste as possessing dynamic agency, how might that change the ethics of refuse-ing and ostracizing wasted humans? Poets, the ragpickers of litter-ature, cure homeopathically. Waste, Compost, and Gleaning Aesthetics acknowledge the poignancy of materiality by revealing the humanity we share."-- Provided by publisher Tracing material and metaphoric waste through the Western canon, ranging from Beowulf to Samuel Beckett, Susan Signe Morrison disrupts traditional perceptions of waste to better understand how we theorize, manage, and are implicated in what is discarded and seen as garbage. Engaging a wide range of disciplines, Morrison addresses how the materiality of waste has been sedimented into a variety of toxic metaphors. If scholars can read waste as possessing dynamic agency, how might that change the ethics of refuse-ing and ostracizing wasted humans? A major contribution to the growing field of Waste Studies, this comparative and theoretically innovative book confronts the reader with the ethical urgency present in waste literature itself. Tracing the presence of material and metaphoric waste in the western canon, Morrison, arguing within a material ecocritical approach, proposes an ethical paradigm by which waste, compost, and gleaning aesthetics in poetry homeopathically heal"