ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the spectacular mediation of the modern environmental imaginary renders problematic any normative account of environmental fittingness. It begins by explicating Guy Debord’s account of the spectacle to assess the role images play in mediating modern accounts of reality within production society. Next, it employs the language of the spectacle to analyse two examples of spectacular environmental images that shape perceptions of waste’s unfittingness. It then examines the inseparability of material and social ordering by engaging with Zygmunt Bauman’s description of ‘human waste’ as an inevitable consequence of modernity’s order-building strategies. Finally, this chapter offers a constructive proposal for a descriptive account of environmental fittingness that combines Jason Moore’s world-ecology with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric account of the human distinctive.
