Abstract

Within the discourse of creative renewal, new modes of valuing everyday objects have appeared. These modes emphasize the potential for waste to become something positive and to be reintegrated into the social order. The idea that waste can undergo creative renewal challenges the notion that it is fixed in its status as waste. While the discourse of the creative renewal of waste stresses the capacity for trash to be transformed, in this paper I examine the tensions that exist alongside this transformation. While the inexactness of the concept of waste might allow for certain malleability, this paper also attends to the «stickiness» of waste and resistances to change. How do the discourses of creatively transforming waste intersect with other ways of knowing waste? What emerges when we broaden the scope of «remaking waste» to include its figurative and affective dimensions? This paper will draw on ethnographic findings of the Garage Sale Trail event in Sydney, Australia to explore these questions.