ABSTRACT
Hinterlands, as places beyond the visible and known, are instrumental metaphors of what lies outside the rational space carved out by Enlightenment values. Dystopian fiction has a history of problematizing this hinterland/civilization dichotomy. This is the case in J. G. Ballard's High-Rise and Concrete Island, where hinterlands are infused into the urban fabric as heterotopic sites of resistance, bringing what will be argued is an ethical relationship between the “otherness” of the hinterlands and Capitolocene space of Ballard's urban environments. To better flesh out this ethical dimension of hinterlands in Ballard's work, this chapter will apply the concept of waste as it has been developed in waste studies. Within the broad investigation of how waste is defined in our culture, waste studies also examines how the function of waste has altered in advanced capitalist societies and how it is often used as a defining marker of hinterlands. This chapter will develop the significance of waste in relation to the hinterland status of Ballardian dystopian spaces, arguing that just as there is nothing like a clear demarcation separating civilization from its antipodes, waste, and modernity, there also exists a clear, ethical dimension in how both waste and hinterlands act on the subject.
