Carelessness and Ignorance: The Epistemic Vices of the Privileged Analyzed Through Their Waste

In this paper, I bring social feminist epistemology, ethics of care, and waste studies into conversation. I do so by reflecting on two alternative narratives of human evolution told by Ursula Le Guin in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Technology plays a central role in both. In the first story, the carrier bag’s invention tells of humanity using what nature spontaneously produces and learning to preserve it to satisfy human needs. In the second story, the spear’s invention tells of humanity having to sacrifice other species to survive; it follows a unidirectional, linear logic and cannot take the complexity of, or interdependence between, humans and the environment into account. The first narrative describes a caring and sharing humanity, one that pays special attention to the material practices that promote the flourishing of human and non-human life. Humans respect the principles of non-waste and responsibility for what is consumed. In contrast, the second narrative sees the prevalence of a dissipative human attitude. I shall argue that this latter attitude has led to today’s acceptance of unlimited growth—to the willful ignorance of the corresponding and equally unlimited growth of waste. The world’s rich and privileged countries are mainly responsible for the consumption of material goods but they have not yet come to terms with their waste. This is thanks to the possibility of relegating that waste to an ‘Elsewhere’ (often coinciding with the Global South). This “privileged irresponsibility” is based on technologies of distraction or deflection from the inequalities, social suffering, and injustices produced by the current global social infrastructure’s “slow violence.”