The discursive chronotopes of waste: Temporal laminations and linguistic hauntings

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents two case-study examples of the discursive chronotopes by which domestic waste is organized as a linguistic, spatial, and temporal configuration. Marked by their liminality and temporal laminations, curbside garbage collection and secondhand/thrift shops are major sociomaterial practices in Switzerland. The three discursive chronotopes we address in these contexts are those concerned with regulation, repression, and (re)valuation. By focusing on the temporalities of waste, we complicate how linguistic landscape research typically conceives of, and approaches, both space and language. The language of waste is not always visible or even expressed. Indeed, waste is often deliberately rendered invisible—under the cover of darkness, behind closed doors, sent elsewhere—and thereby functions as an act of discursive suppression. For these reasons, we endorse a hauntological approach to linguistic landscapes. (Waste, linguistic landscape, discursive chronotope, temporal lamination, hauntology)*