Common Worlding Waste Pedagogies take seriously the tensions that plastics unruly liveliness and the rippling affect/effect of the capitalist complex that perpetuate excess consumption and mindless wasting.
Thinking with the concept of excess, common worlding waste pedagogies disrupt the process of hyper-separation and instead amplifies plastics presence. In the plastic classroom we pay attention to how plastics invite us to respond to their presence.
With hundreds of plastic water bottles spread out across the floor, sitting on shelves, and hanging from the ceiling, bodies and bottles bump up against each other. In these ‘back and forth’ movements, we are reminded of the affective process of touch. The dozen plastic water bottles that hang on strings suspended from the ceiling command attention as educators and children alike must either weave around them or plow straight through. In either case the bottles stir, responding to both the gentle brushing of bodies or violent pushes to one side or the other.
After the child’s tiny hands push a bottle aside, they stand in place and watch as the bottles bump up against bottles creating a rippling movement that slowly stills. Another pair of tiny hands grab hold of one of the bottles and pushes it forcefully straight ahead and then run along behind it. The bottle reaches the end of a pendulum-like arc and suspends in the air for a split second then begins to travel backwards with the child following close behind. Bottles and children move in and out, back and forth, each responding to the other’s movements.
Kelly-Ann MacAlpine
Reference
Hawkins, G. (2010). Plastic materialities. In S. Whatmore & B. Braun (Eds.), Political matter (pp. 119–138). University of Minnesota Press.