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‘Garbage Amnesia’ and Literature as Counter-Memory - Changes in the Waste Management System and the Memory Culture of the Consuming Public (3) -

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2025, (98), pp.153~189
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : June 28, 2025
  • Accepted : July 29, 2025
  • Published : August 31, 2025

LIM, TAEHUN 1

1성균관대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The waste disposal systems of modern consumer society are more than mere technical procedures for hygiene and efficiency; they function as social mechanisms that systematically erase specific memories. This study conceptualizes the repetitive social and institutional mechanisms producing forgetting alongside waste as ‘garbage amnesia.’ It posits an ‘infrastructure of forgetting’—a system wherein memory is externalized through the intricate interplay of technology, social structures, and cultural rhythms—as the underlying condition for this collective symptom. The relationship between these concepts illuminates the operational dynamics of contemporary memory politics. A multifaceted theoretical inquiry elucidates how this ‘infrastructure of forgetting’ contributes to both sensory erosion and ethical desensitization. Drawing on theories such as the technological reconfiguration of memory (Stiegler), social classification and symbolic exclusion (Assmann, Douglas), and the deliberate production of ignorance (agnotology), the analysis explores how waste disposal systems intersect with the logics of technology, space, and capital to construct forgetting. Referencing the work of Heather Rogers, the study argues that landfills have advanced beyond technical and aesthetic concealment to enter the most sophisticated stage of forgetting under the rubric of ‘resource recovery.’ Building on this analysis, the study proposes a role for literature in resisting this systematic forgetting and suggests new directions for research. The novels of Jung Yeon-hee and Kang Young-sook excavate the concealed layers of waste, revealing the materiality of memories buried within. Essays by Han Seung-tae and Hong Jae-hee capture paradoxical moments when apparatuses designed to facilitate forgetting—such as septic tanks and sewers— are transformed into repositories of memory. The study concludes by positioning literature as a critical mode of intervention within the infrastructure of forgetting.

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