Yesterday I successfully defended my Ph.D thesis, with Professors Tim Ingold and Mark Currie serving as my examiners. I really didn’t know what to expect from my viva but I looked forward to talking to two people who were reading my work for the first time and in the form it was intended to be read. All sorts of issues were raised – about the relationship between objects and their constituting materials, the nature of surprise, the structures of contradiction that motivate my understanding of waste, the tenses and times of matter and its use and abandonment – and I’m very grateful that my examiners were thoroughly and enthusiastically critical.
Having devoted three years to making up my mind about waste, I’m glad to be moving on to other things. I hope to see what after effects can be found with these wastewords, meanwhile I continue to act as Assistant Editor at Pluto Press and Commissioning Editor at Pod Academy.
