At Home in an Unhomely World: On Living With Waste

Abstract

Modern-day waste, such as the microplastics in the water, particulate matter in the air and chemical waste in the soil, distorts notions of inner and outer, of familiarity and strangeness, of own and other, and turns our world into an unhomely (uncanny) place. This paper explores what it means to live with waste instead of trying to make it go away. When we explore the ontology of waste, we find that waste is never unambiguously (in the) present and invites us to take "being" as haunted and explore a "hauntology" (Jaques Derrida) of waste. This hauntology refers to being as ecological being or "being ecological" (Timothy Morton) and invites us to inquire after the "eco" in ecology: the Greeks oikos (home). When, as this paper suggests, we take cohabitation as a starting point, it becomes unclear who is the host and who has come to visit. Whose home takes central stage? And whose world? This paper argues we need to let go of an overarching concept of "world" and instead become familiar with (our) "habitat" and in so doing open it up to the non-humans we share our home with. Sticking with the metaphor of (un)home(liness) this paper argues that our house is a haunted house and explores ways in which we can become hospitable with these (unwelcome) guests.

Situating Data

“…Here, the desire of a condition without waste becomes very evident. Below, I will also engage with the accounts of Slater (1971), Graeber (2012), Morton (2013), and Doeland (2019), who also write about the undesirability of being confronted with waste.…”

The decaying stuff of the Anthropocene: exploring contemporary trashscapes through ruination

“…Living in the Wasteocene thus means living in trashscapes, in a world that is permanently polluted (Murphy, 2013;Liboiron, 2016;Liboiron et al, 2018): we have colonized the soil, the marine environment, and the air with our waste to the extent that there is no longer any untouched nature, "uncontaminated by human 6. https://www.artworksforchange.org/portfolio/chris-jordan/ 7. The English term uncanny is derived from the word knowledge (un-knowable), but in German, the word unheimlich refers to the un-homely or un-homelike (derived from das Heim, home) (see also Doeland, 2019).…”

“…Coming to terms with the Wasteocene perhaps entails the necessity to let go of dreams of unpolluted waters, accept the anthropogenic touch that has reached all over, and then form relations grounded on togetherness in the Wasteocene. For instance, plastics provide a thinking point "between risk and potential": an opportunity to rethink hospitality relations and who is the host and who is the guest (Doeland, 2019;Bergmann, 2021, p. 91) and to strike a balance in that relationship in a way that would be responsible and just for humans and nonhumans alike.…”

The Climate Politics of Care Practices: A Conceptual and Political Exploration of More Than Human Atmospheric Care Under Conditions of Air Pollution

“…By building a life on the toxic grounds of the factory, natterjack toads make a home out of a space that was not meant to host (especially endangered) living beings. Of course, fostering to feel "at home" in times of atmospheric trouble has a strange and uncanny ring to it (Doeland 2019). In damaged worlds, practicing intimacy with forgotten "things", and reaffecting our relationships with those things, means that the uncanniness of the situation(s) we are in becomes more tangible, as it explicitly enters lived experience.…”