Jonathan Culler, Rubbish Theory

Shoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the dining table. Food is not dirty in itself ,
but its is dirty to leave cooking ustensils in the bedroom, or food bespattered on clothing .... outdoor things
indoors .... and so on. In short, our pollution behaviour is the reaction which condemns any object or idea likely
to confuse or contradict cherished classifications.
Since systems of classification depend upon exclusions, one looks at what is apparently marginal to the system
in order to understand the system.
Most of us have quite a lot of quite ordinary and inoffensive junk, which is most simply defined as stuff that is
of no real value but which you are keeping around because, well, you never know, and besides, you just havent
got around to throwing it out. We all have material of this sort which scarcely pollutes and seems quite
inoffensive until someone comes along with another use for the space that it occupies: Look, we have to clean
all that junk out of the closet in the guest room so our guests can use it, or We have to clear that rubbish out of
the garage so that we can put the car in the winter ...
.... A lot of junk that people collect is of this sort: relics, remnants and representations of things done, seen and
admired. This is rubbish because it has no use-value, nor any value in an economic system of exchange; it has
only the signifying function of a marker, and its very inferiority to what it marks makes it rubbish.
Thompson begins by identifying two general categories in which e place cultural objects, the transient and the
durable . Objects placed in the transient class are thought of as having finite life-spans and as decreasing in
value over time. Objects viewed as durable are endowed with ideally, infinite life-spans and retain their value
or even increase in value over time.....for a wide range of objects class membership is determined by social
forces as much as the physical character of an object: a vase may be placed either in the transient category or in
the durable category (viewed as secondhand or as an antique).
A transient object, decreasing in value, becomes rubbish, where it exists in a timeless limbo, without value, but
where it has a chance of being discovered and suddenly transformed into a durable.
Thompsons discussion of Stevengraphs focuses on the way in which the transfer from rubbish to durable
occurs. We might be tempted to say that it is all a matter of taste: one mans rubbish is another mans
collectable. Indeed, the word collectable suggests as much, since any reasonable-sized physical object is
collectable. The question is, which collectables are collectors items and why? The answer - scarcely satisfying
- seems to be, first, that collectors; items are collectables collected by collectors.
New, is that the States, having been in existence for a much shorter time than Europe, has a much smaller
repertoire of rubbish to choose from. Alternatively, it can be seen as an example of the principle of a prophet
being without honor in his own land. The most likely and much less palatable reason is that the power of the
United States is very much greater than that of Britain, that durables are in the hands of the most powerful, and
that when there is a shift in power there is a shift in durables as well.