ABSTRACT
This article deploys the category of “waste” as an analytical optic through which to explore the connections between the degradation of labour, the contradictions of the value-form, the environment-making dynamics of commodity frontiers and the whirl of finance capital. This investigation forms the basis of a comparison between two very different literary texts: Thomas Hardy’s short-story “On the Western Circuit” (1891), set in England’s semi-peripheral West Country; and José Américo de Almeida’s novel Trash (A Bagaceira, 1928), set across northeast Brazil’s sugar zone and peripheral sertão region.
