Out of the Bin, into the Open: Looking at the Mediating and Performing Material Afterlives of Data

With the notion of a material afterlife of data, this chapter addresses the issue of unregulated electronic waste recycling as an integral aspect of our digital cultures and the ways we interface with digital data. As such, this chapter not only foregrounds important issues of social and environmental justice as part of digital cultures, but it also counters the historical cultural tendency in Western thinking that privileges disembodied information over materiality. With an orientation toward the ways materiality mediates and performs, I take a new materialist approach in my analysis of the documentary Welcome to Sodom (2018). I conclude by proposing that the f ire representations in the documentary are a productive imaginary for understanding the material entanglements of the afterlife of data.