ABJECT AMERICANS: WASTE, OBSOLESCENCE, AND STRATEGIES OF RECYCLING IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE By DEREK SCHWARTZ MERRILL A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2006 Copyright 2006 by Derek Schwartz Merrill Dedicated to those fighting the 5 year plan. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Seclusion is necessary to complete a project such as this. During the writing and revising stages it is easy to forget the social aspect of knowledge. To this end, the University of Florida has proven invaluable. My time spent at UF was highly rewarding thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of the faculty and graduate students. The MRG provided the intellectual space and focus necessary to maintaining a critical edge throughout these years. Special thanks goes to the Chair of the Department, John Leavey, whose vision makes this department a dynamic place to study. Thanks to him, the MRG has a national presence of organizing highly engaging conferences. I also want to the thank the staff for all their help over the years: Carla Blount, Loretta Dampier, Melissa Davis, Kaaren Moffat, Jeri White, and Kathy Williams. Finally, I want to acknowledge the students in my classes who have contributed to help me understand the finer aspects of literature and culture. More specifically, I thank my friends in California for their generosity and unflinching support: Carla Hamby, Kris Melberg, Chris Tow, and Rosalia Valencia-Tow. I will always be thankful for their enduring friendship. My family, of course, has also played a vital role in my life by supporting me throughout. I thank my sister Jennifer Merrill, and my brother in-law Kevin Sinarle for all those burritos and pizzas; my grandmothers, Mary Merrill and Ethel Schwartz for all those card games; I especially want to thank my Mom and Dad who have helped me unconditionally in so many ways. Without their psychic and financial support, this dissertation would have never been iv finished. From Florida, I thank Anton P. Janulis; Brian Meredith and his mother and father, Alice and Mike; Liz Graham; and Fred Young. Their friendship has opened my world beyond what I could have imaged. My committee deserves special thanks for all their support over the last 4 years. They are instrumental in guiding how I think about not only my own work, but also my relationship to this discipline. I thank Alex Alberro for the semester chats that always proved inspiring, Marsha Bryant for all her professional advice since my first semester at UF, and Susan Hegeman for her scholarly advice that always brought me back on track. My chair, Phil Wegner, provided continual encouragement and had faith in my project when I was certainly unsure of its merits. His kindness will forever be a model for which I will try to emulate. And finally, to the brave world of new forms of kinship: Maria, Manual, and Guillermina. They reminded me of what is at stake in my project. v TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................9 The Politics of the Washroom ......................................................................................9 Strategies of Recycling in Literature and Visual Culture...........................................11 2 PRODUCING WASTE, PRACTICING RECYCLING ............................................14 The Over Production of Waste ...................................................................................14 Throwaways................................................................................................................16 Spatial Closures ..........................................................................................................19 Repair..........................................................................................................................24 From Repair to Recycling...........................................................................................26 Remaking Waste.........................................................................................................29 Cultural Studies on Waste ..........................................................................................40 3 THE MASS PRODUCTION OF WASTE.................................................................55 The Antiseptic Frederick Taylor.................................................................................58 From The Sterile Factory to the Dirty Streets ............................................................71 The Great Gatsby and the Dream of Reinvention ......................................................72 Taylor’s Body......................................................................................................75 Pre-Taylor............................................................................................................76 Success as Lifestyle.............................................................................................82 Manhattan Fantasy Land .....................................................................................86 The Violence of Waste ........................................................................................88 The Day of The Locust: The Mass Production of The American Dream ...................91 Slumming as Performance...................................................................................94 The People Who Would Rule Los Angeles after Its Destruction......................101 The Violence of Dreaming ................................................................................104 The Cheated: A Body Beyond Taylor...............................................................108 4 THE SOCIETY OF STERILITY .............................................................................116 vi The Schlemihl...........................................................................................................118 Lefebvre and The Everyday......................................................................................121 Situations towards a Production of Space ................................................................126 Pynchon’s Fiction .....................................................................................................128 “Low-lands” ......................................................................................................128 The Crying of Lot 49..........................................................................................133 Vineland.............................................................................................................140 Mason and Dixon ..............................................................................................151 Projections of Waste.................................................................................................164 5 UNREPEATING THE COMMODITY FORM OF WASTE ..................................172 Gleaning Waste.........................................................................................................175 The Spectacle that is White Noise.............................................................................177 The Spectacle of Waste and The Airborne Toxic Event ...................................182 The Collective in the Supermarket....................................................................189 Underworld...............................................................................................................198 Architects against Waste ...................................................................................198 Recycling, A New Way of Life.........................................................................203 Everyday Recycling...........................................................................................205 Wasted People ...................................................................................................207 The Art of Waste ...............................................................................................208 The Aesthetic of Recycling ...............................................................................213 The Haunting of Recycling ...............................................................................220 6 LUMPENPROLETARIAT OF THE WORLD . SWARM!.................................223 Toward a Waste Collective.......................................................................................226 The Lumpenproletariat and Multitude......................................................................228 Almanac of the Dead ................................................................................................235 Lecha .................................................................................................................242 Angelita .............................................................................................................246 From an Almanac to Paradise...................................................................................253 Paradise....................................................................................................................255 Preserving