Electronics involve an elaborate process of waste-making, from the mining of raw materials to the production of microchips through toxic solvents, to the eventual recycling or disposal of obsolete equipment. These processes of pollution, remainder and decay reveal other orders of materiality that have yet to enter the sense of the digital. This thesis investigates electronics through this waste and remainder. The thesis is guided by Walter Benjamin's notion of "natural history," and focuses on the dynamic, transient and poetic qualities of outmoded or "fossilized" commodities. Described here are electronic versions of such fossils, as well as the more formless residues that are sloughed off in the pursuit of technological advance. / Electronic technologies expand beyond devices and programs to an assemblage of sites and systems. Instead of a collection of outdated artifacts, this study further suggests that it is necessary not to focus solely on the abandoned electronic gadget, but also to consider the extended contexts through which electronics and electronic waste circulate. My intention here is to crack open the black box of electronics, and track their transformation to waste across a number of fields, from manufacture to disposal, and from archive to landfill, which inform the chapters below. By focusing on waste, this study is less interested in material comprehensiveness, or all that goes into electronics, and is instead more attentive toward material proliferations. In this way, I work through the "inputs and outputs" that take place not only at a material level, but also at cultural, political and economic levels. There is much more to electronics than raw materials transformed into neat gadgets that swiftly become obsolete. This study then considers electronics not from the perspective of all that is new, but rather from the perspective of all that is discarded. These discards, this study suggests, direct us toward considerations of electronics, technologies and material culture that are informed not by "upgrades," but instead by politics and poetics.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.103197 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Gabrys, Jennifer. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Art History and Communication Studies.) |
| Rights | © Jennifer Gabrys, 2007 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002665508, proquestno: AAINR38588, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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