Stuff and Things
William Viney, Waste: A Philosophy of Things
Bloomsbury, 240pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781472527578
reviewed by Jeffrey Petts
How much philosophy is there in a story about shoes? It's a feature of using things, for humans, that it involves more than just a mere description of functioning. Will Viney introduces his account of ‘things’ with stories related to his everyday life, describing the ‘use-time’ (as he calls it) of his running and walking shoes, ‘putting out the rubbish and jogging.’ Then there is ‘waste-time’ too; worn-out or forgotten, not in another ‘space’ but ‘outside time’. (Viney notes we say things have ‘had their time’, ‘seen better days’, and so on.) ‘Waste is matter out of time’ is the philosophical lesson of shoe stories, so it’s argued. Contrastingly, Viney cites Mary Douglas’ assertion, in Purity and Danger (1966), that waste is ‘matter out of space’ and linked to thinking about neatness and cleanliness; about actions of arranging, separating and ordering. He is sceptical about existing descriptions of waste – the ‘spatial approach’ at least – and believes shoe stories are better, properly incorporating the ‘flux and complexity’ of relations between us and things by using an ‘expanded vocabulary’ of waste-time.
Viney is not explicit about the theoretical context he's working in, but he is clear that Waste: A Philosophy of Things is ‘not a work of environmental politics and does not provide a political economy of waste.’ He goes on to say his concepts of waste- and use-time ‘seek a philosophical mandate.’ So Waste can be read in the context of, for example, Greg Kennedy’s An Ontology of Trash (2007) in the phenomenological tradition; but also, given its broad philosophic goal and lengthy attention to artworks and architecture, the book enters domains commonly associated with analytic and Continental traditions in philosophical aesthetics.
Most things we use are made things, and it is a general feature of human making – whether of artworks or quotidian, functional objects like shoes – that it involves the production of waste. In making works of art especially, it seems to involve an aesthetic dimension, but it can be reasonably argued that a broad process of 'looking right' applies to all made things. In his Pedagogical Sketchbook Paul Klee gives a one-page account of production as essentially involving ‘subtractions and additions’: in that light, the construction of shoes involves – in cutting patterns, stitching, tacking, heeling – ‘subtractions’ which discard materials as well as the obvious ‘additions.’ Klee notes this as a time-bound process, one initiated by a creative act but immediately introducing counter-requirements to judge, to control production. Viney argues that we discard things because we ‘encounter the time of things’ and not because of the needs to organise clean space, but Klee quickly and clearly shows how we can dispute the latter too without a commitment to ‘temporal thinking’ about waste. An alternative stems from the temporality of making things, which is indicated by aesthetic interests controlling production.
Waste argues for ‘the timely and essential role waste plays in bringing measure to our doings,’ but the introduction of a concept of ‘waste-time’ seems unnecessary to that end, at least so far as making things is concerned. What drives that activity is good design and skilled workmanship and the decisions they enforce. A trip to the Victor & Albert Museum’s 2015 Shoes exhibition would confirm that contemporary shoe designers all relate good design to recognising and meeting new needs: the basic requirement of quality control. Making involves all kinds of activities which broadly speaking cut as well as create, in short. So we can agree with Viney then, in the sense that ‘waste’ should not be understood as only ‘wasted time’ and ‘rubbish’ but as properly and revealingly part of the ‘scheme of things’. But that’s all. Analogously, our everyday use of made things is ordinarily understood to involve ‘waste’ as part of the process of using, both as wear-and-tear, but also as part of finding better things to use.
Waste continues with chapters on waste in relation to sculpture (focused on the work of Cornelia Parker), literature (TS Eliot) and architecture (especially ruins). Addressing the ‘poetic economies of T.S. Eliot’, Viney highlights the problems of conceptualising waste outside some well-established (both practically and theoretically) insights into making and using things generally, including artworks. Viney contends that the rejected elements of artistic making are created alongside the work as its accompaniment: the contention is fine so long as the work has appreciative priority; but in that case it’s also a prosaic, established conclusion about the necessary ‘waste’ or ‘subtraction’ involved in artistic work. Ezra Pound’s rejection of the original opening line of the Wasteland (‘First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom’s place’) represents, as Valerie Eliot rightly put it, his ‘maieutic skill’ and also, we can add, Elliot’s skill in recognising his latent, poetic ideas properly expressed, that his arresting opening was actually on page two.
What seems to emerge after what Viney calls his ‘philosophical poeticising’ about art, is just a range of commonplaces about artistic making; in literature’s case, about drafts and editing, and so on. It might contribute to the idea that the proper appreciative grounds for artworks include discarded elements in their ideation and making, but this is not argued. And there is nothing about the ontology of works of art: here, at least, there might have been scope to argue that Eliot’s Wasteland, as a thing called a work, properly includes its discarded material as part of the work itself. At best, Viney’s examples from art-making only confirm another commonplace in the ontology of art, that a work is more than the words in a poem, the materials used in a sculpture and so on – works are cultural artefacts, regarded and experienced as such.
Viney's shoe anecdote makes passing mention of Heidegger's account of the origins of art. Heidegger too has a shoe story: his was about Van Gogh's depiction of a pair, and its prefatory to arguments about the relations between art and truth. But Heidegger's story and subsequent theory was questioned when the art historian Meyer Schapiro pointed out the differences in Van Gogh's various shoe paintings. So the version probably seen by Heidegger was in a realist style rather than one where Van Gogh is more ornamental in his use of lines and use of bolder colours. Schapiro concluded this was evidence of Heidegger projecting his own imaginings into the painting, which then entered a wider philosophical debate about 'truth in painting,’ the narrowness of Heidegger’s theory of art, and so on.
So how is any concept of waste helpful in answering philosophical questions about things? At best perhaps ‘waste’ might help mark out good work as an activity, and so contribute to philosophical aesthetics. But then it’s a part of a positive account of making rather than simply a counter to ‘spatial ordering’ theory. Such a formulation of ‘waste’ would suggest creative rather than routine work and offer theoretical support against, for example, the virtual, waste-free interactivity of digital life which Baudrillard argues ‘removes all reference to things’ by its aspiration to perfection. If Waste indicates that route, then something valuable is established theoretically and practically: subject-object duality is important to life; paradoxically waste is not the great evident evil of consumerism but, necessarily and positively, ‘evidence of life’s activities.’ What we waste and how we recycle is, of course, another matter.
Viney is not explicit about the theoretical context he's working in, but he is clear that Waste: A Philosophy of Things is ‘not a work of environmental politics and does not provide a political economy of waste.’ He goes on to say his concepts of waste- and use-time ‘seek a philosophical mandate.’ So Waste can be read in the context of, for example, Greg Kennedy’s An Ontology of Trash (2007) in the phenomenological tradition; but also, given its broad philosophic goal and lengthy attention to artworks and architecture, the book enters domains commonly associated with analytic and Continental traditions in philosophical aesthetics.
Most things we use are made things, and it is a general feature of human making – whether of artworks or quotidian, functional objects like shoes – that it involves the production of waste. In making works of art especially, it seems to involve an aesthetic dimension, but it can be reasonably argued that a broad process of 'looking right' applies to all made things. In his Pedagogical Sketchbook Paul Klee gives a one-page account of production as essentially involving ‘subtractions and additions’: in that light, the construction of shoes involves – in cutting patterns, stitching, tacking, heeling – ‘subtractions’ which discard materials as well as the obvious ‘additions.’ Klee notes this as a time-bound process, one initiated by a creative act but immediately introducing counter-requirements to judge, to control production. Viney argues that we discard things because we ‘encounter the time of things’ and not because of the needs to organise clean space, but Klee quickly and clearly shows how we can dispute the latter too without a commitment to ‘temporal thinking’ about waste. An alternative stems from the temporality of making things, which is indicated by aesthetic interests controlling production.
Waste argues for ‘the timely and essential role waste plays in bringing measure to our doings,’ but the introduction of a concept of ‘waste-time’ seems unnecessary to that end, at least so far as making things is concerned. What drives that activity is good design and skilled workmanship and the decisions they enforce. A trip to the Victor & Albert Museum’s 2015 Shoes exhibition would confirm that contemporary shoe designers all relate good design to recognising and meeting new needs: the basic requirement of quality control. Making involves all kinds of activities which broadly speaking cut as well as create, in short. So we can agree with Viney then, in the sense that ‘waste’ should not be understood as only ‘wasted time’ and ‘rubbish’ but as properly and revealingly part of the ‘scheme of things’. But that’s all. Analogously, our everyday use of made things is ordinarily understood to involve ‘waste’ as part of the process of using, both as wear-and-tear, but also as part of finding better things to use.
Waste continues with chapters on waste in relation to sculpture (focused on the work of Cornelia Parker), literature (TS Eliot) and architecture (especially ruins). Addressing the ‘poetic economies of T.S. Eliot’, Viney highlights the problems of conceptualising waste outside some well-established (both practically and theoretically) insights into making and using things generally, including artworks. Viney contends that the rejected elements of artistic making are created alongside the work as its accompaniment: the contention is fine so long as the work has appreciative priority; but in that case it’s also a prosaic, established conclusion about the necessary ‘waste’ or ‘subtraction’ involved in artistic work. Ezra Pound’s rejection of the original opening line of the Wasteland (‘First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom’s place’) represents, as Valerie Eliot rightly put it, his ‘maieutic skill’ and also, we can add, Elliot’s skill in recognising his latent, poetic ideas properly expressed, that his arresting opening was actually on page two.
What seems to emerge after what Viney calls his ‘philosophical poeticising’ about art, is just a range of commonplaces about artistic making; in literature’s case, about drafts and editing, and so on. It might contribute to the idea that the proper appreciative grounds for artworks include discarded elements in their ideation and making, but this is not argued. And there is nothing about the ontology of works of art: here, at least, there might have been scope to argue that Eliot’s Wasteland, as a thing called a work, properly includes its discarded material as part of the work itself. At best, Viney’s examples from art-making only confirm another commonplace in the ontology of art, that a work is more than the words in a poem, the materials used in a sculpture and so on – works are cultural artefacts, regarded and experienced as such.
Viney's shoe anecdote makes passing mention of Heidegger's account of the origins of art. Heidegger too has a shoe story: his was about Van Gogh's depiction of a pair, and its prefatory to arguments about the relations between art and truth. But Heidegger's story and subsequent theory was questioned when the art historian Meyer Schapiro pointed out the differences in Van Gogh's various shoe paintings. So the version probably seen by Heidegger was in a realist style rather than one where Van Gogh is more ornamental in his use of lines and use of bolder colours. Schapiro concluded this was evidence of Heidegger projecting his own imaginings into the painting, which then entered a wider philosophical debate about 'truth in painting,’ the narrowness of Heidegger’s theory of art, and so on.
So how is any concept of waste helpful in answering philosophical questions about things? At best perhaps ‘waste’ might help mark out good work as an activity, and so contribute to philosophical aesthetics. But then it’s a part of a positive account of making rather than simply a counter to ‘spatial ordering’ theory. Such a formulation of ‘waste’ would suggest creative rather than routine work and offer theoretical support against, for example, the virtual, waste-free interactivity of digital life which Baudrillard argues ‘removes all reference to things’ by its aspiration to perfection. If Waste indicates that route, then something valuable is established theoretically and practically: subject-object duality is important to life; paradoxically waste is not the great evident evil of consumerism but, necessarily and positively, ‘evidence of life’s activities.’ What we waste and how we recycle is, of course, another matter.