The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste

Abstract

Andrei Guruianu and Natalia Andrievskikh Visual Rhetoric Edited by David Blakesley (Founding Editor: Marguerite Helmers) Information and Pricing 978-1-64317-049-7 (paperback, $34) 978-1-64317-050-3 (hardcover, $70) 978-1-64317-051-0 (Adobe eBook, $19.99, by CD or email) © 2019 by Parlor Press, in full color with 72 illustrations, bibliography, and index. 303 pages. Bookstores : Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. Reviews John Purfield, enculturation , 15 March 2021. About This Book As one of its driving principles, The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste analyzes the double reconstitution of discarded items. In this afterlife, discarded objects might transform from a worthless object into a plaything or a work of art, and then to an artifact marking a specific historical time period. This transformation is represented through various forms of recollection—stories, photographs, collectibles, heirlooms, monuments, and more. Shaped by nostalgia and wishful thinking, discarded objects represent what is wasted, desired, and aestheticized, existing at the intersection of individual and collective consciousness. While The Afterlife of Discarded Objects constitutes a version of revisionist historiography through its engagement with alternative anthropological artifacts, its ambition stretches beyond that to consider how seemingly immaterial phenomena such as memory and identity are embedded in and shaped by material networks, including ephemera. Guruianu and Andrievskikh create a written, visual, and virtual playground where transnational narratives fuse into a discourse on the persistent materiality of ephemera, especially when magnified through narrative and digital embodiment. The Afterlife of Discarded Objects is printed in full color and includes references, an index, and over seventy hi-resolution color images. What People Are Saying “The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgett