Civiltà e spazzatura. Il nesso ambiguo terrore-rifiuti

Media society, which presents itself as an «accomplished utopia», is now more than ever subject to the blackmail of waste and garbage – of areas of obscurity, that extend progressively from the periphery to the center of the city. Beneath the hypnotic and consolatory chant of the present media Shahrazad (commercials, advertising, television, cinema, etc.) that fuels the spectacle of our fairy-tale salvation, lies a dark world. A world composed of our failures in the responsibility we bear toward any alterity that inhabits our environment. In this reversed image of society (the garbage city) lay the faults of us consumers, irresponsible participants to the great fiction of the economy of abundance and waste. The obscene aspect of the production of commodities haunts us like a mystifying revenant, a possible source of daily nightmares such as those portrayed by writers like P.K. Dick, P. Auster, and D. DeLillo.