Civilisation and rubbish

The ambiguous terror-waste nexus

Abstract

The media society, which presents itself as a 'realised utopia', is now more than ever subject to the blackmail of rubbish and rubbish - of the zones of darkness that progressively extend from the periphery to the city centre. Beneath the hypnotic and consolatory chanting of the current media shahrazad (commercials, advertising, television, cinema, etc.) that feeds the spectacle of our fairy-tale salvation, lies a dark world, composed of our failures in our responsibility towards every otherness that inhabits our environment. In this inverted image of society (the city of rubbish) reside the faults of us consumers, irresponsible participants in the great action of the economy of superabundance and waste. The obscene aspect of commodity production haunts us like a mystical revenant, a possible source of daily nightmares such as those portrayed by writers like P.K. Dick, P. Auster and D. DeLillo.