The use-value of human waste and the currency of waste-disposal sites in liquid modernity

Abby Peterson

pp. 14-36

in: Mark Davis, Keith Tester (eds), Bauman's challenge, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

In this chapter I will interrogate Zygmunt Bauman's provocative notion of human waste or wasted lives in liquid modernity — his metaphor for society's outcasts for which society no longer has use. "They are useless, in the sole sense of "use" one can think of in a society of consumers or society of tourists' (Bauman 1998: 96). To engage with Bauman's metaphors, I offer other metaphors, not as elegant, but with the hope of continuing the analysis, which Bauman awakens with his "use" of the metaphor of human waste, that is, people with no "use". In the following pages I will look more closely at the gradations in the hell of the wastelands where wasted lives are lived, and question the conception that human waste is indeed "useless' in liquid modern times, that human waste is devoid of use-value.

Cited authors

Bauman Zygmunt