ABSTRACT
This chapter engages electronic waste (e-waste) toxicity and urban transformation in Ghana to unpack how heritage thinking and rethinking might help us reckon with a postcolonial site that is always in flux. Infamous as the world's largest e-waste dump, Agbogbloshie is known for e-waste processing, extreme toxicity and rampant demolition and displacement. Deemed disposable alongside the e-waste they process and trade, this vibrant yet toxic urban market has been demolished, and activities relocated. The chapter engages with the lived experiences of those displaced from this toxic landscape. It showcases how “toxic heritage” touches workers and their bodies, even if it is emplaced and located or dislocated due to urban planning and other land management processes. It also attends to how toxic legacy persists amid large-scale urban reordering and creative neoliberal slum interventions inspired by, among other things international art and finance. In doing so, the chapter calls for a renewed understanding of toxic e-waste heritage that also includes complex dynamics of erasure, resettlement, and landmarking.
