Wall-E, il Robinson Crusoe del futuro di Ballard e il jogger suicida di Baudrillard. Tre possibili abitanti dell’odierno mondo-spazzatura

The present essay stresses philosophy’s responsibility to delve into the embarrassing reality of a world such as ours, overcome by waste and refuse. A reckless deal was sealed between disposable goods, the immense opportunities for technical manipulation of reality, and the hellish landscape of urban dumps in the consumer society, which might transform the Earth into an endless Gomorrah filled with concrete, ruins, and refuse. To follow the peculiarities of the nexus between goods and waste is a detective’s job, which cuts across many fields of knowledge: literature and the language of advertising, philosophy and TV serials, poetry and fashion. Like a Sherlock Holmes of obsolescence, the philosopher has to pursue the few survival strategies left in a universe overcome by its own waste. This essay concludes with some examples of future ways of inhabiting tomorrow’s world, i.e. the garbage world: Maitland, the protagonist of Ballard’s novel Concrete Island, a survivor on a garbage dump island hermetically surrounded by London’s main arterial roads; Baudrillard’s apocalyptic American jogger who runs till the end of the world comes about, among the debris of our civilization, impervious to any occurence; Wall-E, Pixar’s small robot, who dwells in a desolate world and collects waste into its melancholy hangar (a postmodern cabinet de curiosité of a waning historical consciousness).