Guest lecture: Reading through Rubbish
Guest lecture with Megan Jones, University of Stellenbosch. All interested are welcome.
Abstract:
This paper thinks through the garbage patches in the oceanic gyres as a comparative reading method that can illuminate connections between different locations in the global south. The transoceanic trajectory of waste in the gyres provides an important optic through which to unpack connections between South Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
Oceanic garbage patches are often kilometres wide on the surface, while their microplastics have been found in the deep sediment of the ocean floor. I use this dual lens of surface and depth to think about how the unruly and excessive collectivity of objects in the patches can be read alongside their geographical and historical origins. That is, to find a frame of interpretation that is attentive both to the materiality of junked objects (depth) and the divergent meanings they acquire when juxtaposed alongside each other in the ocean (surface). About half the objects found in the garbage patches are detritus from fishing vessels, but they also contain an array of miscellaneous flotsam: plastic bottles, sanitary ware, toothbrushes, shoes, children’s toys, toilet seats, tyres and so on. By focussing on the after-lives of rubbished objects, the project opens up lines of enquiry about the lives of Southern subjects.
Carried by the currents of the South Atlantic, plastic waste from Southern Africa ends up on the coasts of Brazil and Argentina. Following this trajectory, the paper will read the plastic bottle in the water focussed visual works of South African photographer Masixole Feni (A Drain on Our Dignity, 2017) and the Brazilian artist Eduardo Srur (PETS, 2008-2015). The documentary and experimental qualities of these texts evidence the interplay between ‘surface’ and ‘depth’ emblematic of the patches’ heterogeneity and historicity, offering a mode of reading that is simultaneously expansive and particular.
Dr Megan Jones is a senior lecturer in English Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She is author of a number of articles and book chapters on South African literature, as well as the monograph Refractive Realisms: Literature, Culture and the 21st Century South African Township, forthcoming with Routledge in 2024. Her paper speaks to her more recent work on mediations of waste in her ongoing project, “The Life of Junk”.