Plastic Theory/Studies

Abstract

Abstract While this year’s chapter on plastic theory/studies is relatively short, with only three texts reviewed, it is a harbinger of important texts in preparation that, next year, will broaden the field into dimensions as diverse as world literature and theology. Such an expansion is logical when we see that the texts published this year include: an important and practical textbook introduction as part of MIT Press’s Essential Knowledge series (Imari Walker-Franklin and Jenna Jambeck’s Plastics); a chapter in a book on flashpoint epistemologies (Ranjan Ghosh’s ‘Plastic Pedagogy: Rabindranath Tagore Revisited’); and a book that links plasticity to political thought (Fathali M. Moghaddam’s Political Plasticity). As this review will show, together these texts speak not only of the contemporary anxieties of a world enmeshed in climate and political catastrophes, but also of the pedagogical and political hopes of new generations of scholars and artists, who are thinking about plasticity and plastic theory—not only in texts but also in their practices and art—in relation to a future still in formation.