Abstract

VELEZ VEGA, Jorge. The surplus of solidwaste: between metaphysics, biopolitics and government. Estud. filos. práct. hist. ideas [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.2, pp.65-76. ISSN 1851-9490.

By reviewing the Western philosophical tradition, we trace the concept of recycling in Platonic metaphysics to argue that it is not something typical of the 20th or 21st century, but expressed in its historical singularity, finds a particular reality with reference to an animal Absolute that consumes all its waste without wasting anything. This animal figure, after the transcendent loop has disappeared in our societies and there has been an explosion of solid waste product of the excess of the technique, now manifests itself in the population surplus that has been marginalized, abandoned to poverty and precariousness, taking care of the recycling of the wastes produced by the hyperconsumption. The thesis that is exposed warns that to exist the activity of recycling must put into play the life, whether that of an absolute animal or that of the marginalized population surplus.

Keywords : Solid waste; Platonic metaphysics; Biopolitics; Government; Autorecycling.