Junk Aesthetics from South Africa, Brazil and India: Re-Evaluating the Object

Abstract

My article draws on cultural production from South Africa, Brazil and India to test theorisations that read subjects and objects as ontologically comparable. Using the oceanic circulation of human waste products to link the above locales, I show how the use of junk by the urban poor shows evidence of a relationship with discarded objects that contests their national and transnational marginalisation. Concomitantly, I explore the ways in which aesthetic strategies by Ivan Vladislavíc, Mark Lewis and Tanya Zack, Vik Muniz, and Katherine Boo affirm the disruptive potential of objects while also suggesting the ways in which struggles against poverty continue to centre on humanist understandings of the subject.