Abstract
Waste is not always what it seems. In his Cold War novel Underworld, for example, Don DeLillo explores the multifaceted qualities of waste. “Waste,” he notes, “is the secret history, the underhistory, the way archaeologists dig out the history of early cultures, every sort of bone and broken tool, literally from under the ground.”1 And waste can also be transformed into money:They are trading garbage in the commodity pits in Chicago. They are making synthetic feces in Dallas. You can sell your testicles to a firm in Russia that will give you four thousand dollars and then remove the . . .