Synthetic Frontiers

How an imaginary island became the symbol of contemporary concern for ocean plastic pollution.

A floating plastic island has become a powerful symbol of ocean pollution, but no one can find it at sea. While marine scientists dismiss the trash island as myth, Synthetic Frontiers argues that its persistence is a consequence of dominant ways of knowing and exploiting the Pacific Ocean. Bringing feminist science and technology studies approaches to materiality together with hydrohumanities critiques of terracentrism, Kim De Wolff shows how ocean plastic pollution is shaped by land/water divides and the fluidities that defy them.

The trash island is no mere misrepresentation. It is a synthetic frontier: a territorial line of control that emerges with the products of modern science, and transforms crises of petrocapitalism into landscapes of so-called progress. As such, the story of the trash island—a story where knowledge and awareness of global ecological problems so often fail to instigate meaningful change—is simultaneously about the persistence of plastic pollution and all its associated harms. Where cleanup solutions recycle plastic into ever-more polluted landscapes, De Wolff proposes radically reclaiming synthetics from modern chemistry and modern philosophy in a refusal of elemental frontiers.Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
In/Out of Place
1 Plastic Coastlines, Synthetic Frontiers
Reorientations
2 The Trash Island that Isn’t There
Entanglements
3 Living in the Plastisphere
Landings
Synthetics: Placing Together/With
Notes
Bibliography
Index“A brilliant and detailed ethnographic account of a trash island that cannot be found. This book traces how a synthetic frontier is marking the world and reinscribing colonial borders between land and water.”
—Heather Davis, The New School; author of Plastic Matter

“De Wolff spins a compelling tale about how to think and act about marine pollution, that seagoing sign of trouble in the Anthropocene.”
—Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author of A Book of Waves

“‘Did you see it?’ Synthetic Frontiers boldly confronts the mythification of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch through careful analyses of epistemic uncertainty at sea, in the laboratory, and across media.”
—Melody Jue, Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara; author of Wild Blue MediaKim De Wolff is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of North Texas.