Between Waste Studies and Postcolonial Theory: Wasted Lives, Necropolitics, and Environmental (In)Justice in Marcos Herrera’s La Mitad Mejor

ABSTRACT: This essay bridges a gap between Waste Theory, Postcolonial Studies, and Environmental Justice through a new reading of Marcos Herrera’s La mitad mejor (2009). Set in Buenos Aires’ clandestine underworld, the narrative stages acts of extreme cruelty that reduce its marginalized characters to ‘wasted lives’ (Zygmunt Bauman), ‘living dead’ (Achille Mbembe), and ‘less than human beings’ (Maria Lugones). Attending to Herrera’s ‘unplots’, racialized ‘uncharacters’, and wasted settings, I argue that violence flows deeper than these spectacular acts, and read La mitad mejor as a fictionalized response to Rob Nixon’s pressing question: how to narrate the ‘slow violence’ of environmental injustice.