Research Catalog

Title

The literature of waste : material ecopoetics and ethical matter / Susan Signe Morrison.

Author

Morrison, Susan Signe, 1959-

Publication

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, [2015]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 330 pages; 23 cm

Summary

• "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 refusing 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. "--
• "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"--

Subjects

• Literature and society
• LITERARY CRITICISM / General
• LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
• HISTORY / General
• Consumption (Economics) in literature
• Waste (Economics) in literature
• Ecocriticism
• Recycling (Waste, etc.)
• Refuse and refuse disposal in literature
• Excess (Philosophy)
• LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-300) and index.

Contents

Introduction: The Waste-ern Literary Canon in the Waste-ern Tradition -- Part I. Treatment and Disposal: Approaches to Disciplining Waste: 1. Codification: The Anxiety of Ambiguity; 2. The Fragmented and Corruptible Body: Gendered Waste; 3. The Civilizing Process: Divisive Divisions; 4. Memory and Narrative: Ruins, Nostalgia, and Ghosts; 5. Failed Source Reduction: Conspicuous Consumption and the Inability to Minimize; 6. Urban Myths: The Civilized and Pristine City-Body; 7. Interiorized Waste: Sin and Metaphysical Meaninglessness; 8. The Toxic Metaphor of Wasted Humans: Those Filthy Cleaners Who Scrub Us Spotless -- Part II. Energy Recovery and the Dynamic Power of Things: 9. The Secret Life of Objects: The Audacity of Thingness and the Poignancy of Materiality; 10. Trash Meditation: The Arts of Transience and Proximity -- Part III. Recycling and Composting Form as Restitution: 11. Waste Aesthetics: Puns, Litter-ature, and Intertextuality; 12. Gleaning Aesthetics: Poetry as Communal Salvage -- Part IV. Source Reduction and Reuse: Compassion through Generous Metaphor: 13. Compost Aesthetics: The Poet[h]ics of Metaphor; 14. Poetry as Homeopathy: The Poet as Ragpicker.

Call Number

JFD 15-3350

ISBN

• 9781137405661 (hardback)
• 113740566X (hardback)

LCCN

• 2014047263
• 40025045105

OCLC

899488136

Author

Morrison, Susan Signe, 1959- author.

Title

The literature of waste : material ecopoetics and ethical matter / Susan Signe Morrison.

Publisher

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, [2015]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-300) and index.

Other Standard Identifier

40025045105

Research Call Number

JFD 15-3350