ABSTRACT
Plastic, because it is able to subvert cultural categories, does vital political work in the Philippines. Plastic's local history among Filipino indigenous communities opens up broader questions of value, identity and art. It's plastic's Philippine particularities that make it potent and problematic, generating a set of contested local categories. For wealthy Filipinos, plastic is the detritus of colonialist globalization. Plastic threatens the air with toxins when the poor burn their garbage, blocks the waterways and results in flooding and fills the streets when discarded by sidewalk vendors or thrown by passengers eating snacks on public buses. Metaphorically, plastic blocks national progress. People who are both poor and members of indigenous cultural communities may have an even greater advantage here. They are often self- or seasonally employed and have more time and a wider set of skills and known forms with which to experiment on found and reappropriated materials.
