1) Mike writes of "an ethic of generosity coded as a non-moralizing imperative [in] … garbage as an unreturnable, valueless gift." Is this generous approach to garbage imperative in the sense that we have no choice but to adopt it once less generous, abjective approaches (shipping waste to Asia, etc.) have failed? I'm wondering here about the agency of garbage, and what stops one from sustaining an ambivalent "take it or leave it" attitude toward valueless gifts—— which seems to be what scavengers, remixers, gleaners, bricoleurs are doing.
2) What do we take to be the merits of associating garbage with the gift, rather than with seemingly more disruptive figures like Derrida's guest or Tim Morton's 'strange stranger'? The demanding guest renders the host a guest in his own home— and— this parallels our relationship to garbage. The strange stranger also demands something of us, but resists being anthropomorphized or otherwise 'redeemed' into a guise we can more easily relate to.— To borrow Mike's words, this would seem to evoke a sincere relationship with garbage-as-garbage that "does not necessitate an absolute disavowal of waste’s unassimilablity." Do we find the gift to be a more productive way of framing garbage because unlike the guest or strange stranger, the gift is inanimate? Or is it that the gift prompts a quite openminded relationship with garbage, enabling wider possible relationships than the guest and strange stranger, who are inherently threatening?
