Plastic and presentism : the time of disposability

How did a material as tough and durable as plastic became classified as transient and disposable? This is a temporal question that wrestles with the paradox of how plastic's material endurance and synthetic immortality have been obliterated by economic and cultural practices driven by single use. Disposable plastic things generate a distinct temporality characterized by being immediately present and ephemeral. These things seem to be most definitely in the flow of time: barely there before they are gone, but what does this presentism affirm? How does this material realise the present as without history or origin, and endlessly replaceable? To pursue these issues, historical and sociotechnical accounts of plastic and philosophical explorations of the relations between time and materials are put into dialogue. In historical approaches plastic is recognized as being in time, in the sense of being caught up in the dynamics of historicity and changing contexts, but it is not recognized as being of time: as actualizing new temporal ontologies. Process philosophers provide key insights into the intersections between plasticity and temporality and show how materials are simultaneously in and of time.