The Afterlife of Things

Abstract

This chapter studies the afterlife of the discarded lot more closely in a metal junkyard located in Mayapuri, Delhi. It elaborates why the consumerist landscape needs to fetishize the ‘new’ and encourage compulsive discarding. It maps the trajectory of the discarded and simultaneously analyze the consumers’ changing relationship with the obsolete. It claims that junkyard is a liminal space between usefulness and the lack of it, or use and reuse, where things constantly move and change hands. It also observes how life is induced into the apparently lifeless and value is extracted from waste in ‘operation theatres of inorganic transplants’ by migrant labourers in the margins of the city. It asserts that these operations are directly in conflict with mainstream global models of consumption that rest on doctrines of ephemerality. It also argues how imposed norms on obsolescence produce more discards and reduce the demand for waste, making obsolescence intrinsic to consumer culture.