“E-waste” Colonialism: Mechanism of Late Modernity in Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide

Abstract

Abstract Among numerous literary works on international waste trade, by way of which the toxic waste has been exported basically from developed countries to underdeveloped areas, the Chinese writer Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide is the only one that examines one of the most toxic waste streams, namely, the electronic waste, or the e-waste. However, this particular novel has not received much critical attention in the anglophone world. The few studies on this science fiction tend to focus on the capital market, the conflict between global and local, or the alienation of human and nature, neglecting its significant thematic concern on the e-waste. In this context, this study seeks to address this gap by analyzing the author’s focus on the neglected issue of e-waste in the system of waste colonialism. By exploring this work from the perspective of waste colonialism, this study attempts to disclose how the e-waste functions as a special symbol of late modernity and in what mechanism late modernity works to exert its effect respectively on economic-political institutions, knowledge system, and human cognition of their own subjectivity. Significantly, this study will argue that, in late modernity, the system of waste colonialism has developed into what this study terms “e-waste” colonialism, promoting the reconsolidation of power structure, the intensification of expert knowledge, and the deconstruction of human subjectivity.