A Matter of Time: Plasticity and De-composition

This article engages Ranjan Ghosh’s The Plastic Turn by elaborating some aspects of its plasticity in relation to the work of Catherine Malabou. It appeals to the philosophy of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, among others, to formulate a conception of de-composition that would supplement the plasticity of Malabou and Ghosh. De-composition refers to the composition and decomposition of particles, beings, life, and plastics in terms of a process that takes the form of what Barad calls “spacetimemattering.” Both plasticity and de-composition work to undermine our presumptions of linear time, along with the separation of time from space and from material existence. Finally, after invoking Dipesh Chakrabarty’s notion of the planetary, it considers the afterword to The Plastic Turn, “[t]urn on, …” where Ghosh turns to the “eccentric” Earth and what it means to love and to avoid loving plastic as we imagine new ways of thinking about matter.