Plastic and presentism: the time of disposability

This chapter explores the interactions between material and temporal processes. The driving question is how did a material as tough and durable as plastic become classified as transient and disposable? How were plastic's material endurance and synthetic immortality transformed by economic and cultural practices such as the rise of packaging and single-use objects? Disposable plastic things generate a distinct temporality characterised 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 temporality of presentism affirm? How does plastic 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 recognised as being in time, in the sense of being caught up in the dynamics of historicity and changing social and cultural contexts. However, it is not recognised as being of time, in the sense of actualising new temporal ontologies and experiences. Process philosophers provide key insights into the intersections between plasticity and temporality and show how materials are simultaneously in and of time.