Toward an Aesthetics of Waste: The Representation of Social Inequality and Human Rights Violations in Francophone Literature of the Indian Ocean Islands

This article focuses on how literature from the Indian Ocean islands represents waste, a subject usually unappealing to the reader, and aims to analyze rhetorical strategies that are used to link the issue of garbage to that of social imbalances. It will show how writers such as Jean-Luc Raharimanana and Ananda Devi “recycle” waste by introducing it into literary discourse, resorting to very specific artistic strategies, granting literary power to voices that explain what it means to live in waste, and thus contribute to a global awareness of the deep relationship between environmental problems and postcolonial injustices.