The emergency will last a long time: hyperabjection, slow violence, and the enduring politics of waste in Indonesia

This article explores the dimensions of hyperabjection and slow violence in the context of the ‘garbage emergency’ in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, particularly in relation to the closure of the province’s largest landfill in Piyungan. Urban centres in Indonesia often externalize their waste problem to suburban ‘sacrifice zones’ wherein informal workers with minimal protection manage massive volumes of untreated waste. We argue that this reflects a deeper systemic condition marked by socio-spatial inequality and environmental injustice that is left obscured by ontological and ideological framings that typically inform local government, media, and other social actors, particularly affecting peripheral communities as a result. Drawing on the concept of hyperobject proposed by Timothy Morton and the political rearticulation of that concept in terms of the hyperabject by Mikkel Krause Frantze and Jens Bjering, we show how the ‘garbage emergency’ framing in the case of Yogyakarta’s waste problem both results from and helps to perpetuate structural conditions shaped by neglect and disavowal – an outcome we characterize using Rob Nixon’s notion of ‘slow violence’. Ultimately, this article suggests waste be rethought, not as a discrete problem of disposal, but as a socio-ecological crisis that demands more than techno-bureaucratic solutions.