First as waste, then as feral: The garbological imaginary of Korean stories for decolonizing a wasted world

Abstract

Overwhelming waste is one of the most compelling issues that contemporary environmental and sustainability education (ESE) should address. Understanding waste as an embodiment and offspring of ongoing colonial relations in the Capitalocene, I explore how ESE could perform a string figure with a wasted world by decolonizing more-than-human relationships. The intersections and tensions between colonialism, waste, and ESE are investigated, with a focus on the de/colonization of waste and child. Then, I integrate them with Korean stories in which wasted beings unsettle dumping colonialism and renew their entanglements with a more-than-human world. From their interpretation emerges a polysemous metaphor of waste-child as ambivalent figures and relations of a ruined world. The metamorphosis of waste-child suggests an imaginary praxis of becoming waste and feral, affirming ambiguity and liminality. I propose the futurity of ESE joining in the intertwinement of planetary legacy and colonial debris by multispecies critters for their un/common decolonization.

Keywords:

• waste-child
• more-than-human decolonization
• feral
• environmental and sustainability education
• the Capitalocene
• Korean literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although “wasted lives” in Bauman (2008) primarily refer to refugees, his work provides useful discussions on the phenomena of waste and waste-producing structures of modernity, which are also relevant to this study. While I do not focus on the literal sense of refugee when considering waste, its metaphorical and ecological connotations resonate throughout this work.

2 “SF is a sign for science fiction, speculative feminism, science fantasy, speculative fabulation, science fact, and also, string figures” (Haraway, 2016: 10).

3 I use the phrase “more-than-human” to include both human and nonhuman beings rather than as a substitute for nonhuman, in order to avoid reiterating dualism based on human exceptionalism and instead to embed humans in the larger world.