Afterword Poetry, Waste, and the Body Politic

Abstract

This book begins with Wall-E and ends with Kenneth Goldsmith— one a cartoon robot, one a “word processor”—both machinic waste managers who labor alone, collecting detritus into monumental archives ordered by elaborate and sometimes recondite rules of classification (see figure. 5.1). These archives in turn become investments against the radical shifts of value that “historical progress” wreaks on obsolete modes of production. The waste manager must be selective but also exhaustive, for who knows what objects and structures will prove valuable, even life-saving, to future readers? In Wall-E, what was once the very definition of value—a diamond—is discarded. What once seemed trivial—a cigarette lighter, a plant seedling—takes on dramatic importance. In the end, what determines value in an archive depends largely on the interest and orientation of the scholar, poet, or computer arranging it.