The 'Wipers Monster': Material Relationality in the Anthropocene

Abstract

In recent years, authors from the social sciences have been arguing that it is necessary to pay more attention to objects, because not only humans act, so do materials. Taking the example of the wet wipe, I will explore how materials can act and what relationships are relevant. To do this, I will mobilize two cases, that of the doekje, the wet wipe in Holland, and that of “the wet wipe monster” (the obstruction of a Valencia sewage collector by a jam formed by wet wipes and grease). The case of the wet wipe makes visible that objects do never act alone, they are always in the practices that surround them (in this case practices that have to do with hygiene, care, poop, infrastructure and management of fecal waste). It is not that the objects have agency on humans, but that the assemblies of wet wipes and other waste objects belong to concrete practices (in this case what we do with our poop) reminding us that in the context of environmental crisis it is urgent to think about the material-semiotic effects of things, not just of the agency of things in themselves. The lesson would be to learn to live with the material abundance of the Anthropocene in a better way, rather than defending that objects have agency.