Regulation and Refuse Matter in Don DeLillo's Underworld and Eugene Marten's Waste

(eng) The material turn in ecocriticism posits viewing matter as imbued with agency capable of acting upon individuals and events independently of any form of intentionality. By integrating this vibrancy of matter into their works, Marten and DeLillo underline the negative slant which this performativity may take on when (institutional or material) infrastructure is used to regulate human subjectivity. Furthermore, by reinvesting waste – or refuse matter - as sacred substance which escapes the appropriation of commodity culture, both attempt to recuperate and rethink the value of intersubjectivity as they underline that subject-object relationships are not as one-sided as one may presume.