Plastic Matter

Elements

by Heather Davis

Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Plastic Matter Heather Davis traces plastic’s relations to geology, media, biology, and race to show how matter itself has come to be understood as pliable, disposable, and consumable. The invention and widespread use of plastic, Davis contends, reveals the dominance of the Western orientation to matter and its assumption that matter exists to be endlessly manipulated and controlled by humans. Plastic’s materiality and pliability reinforces these expectations of what matter should be and do. Davis charts these relations to matter by mapping the queer multispecies relationships between humans and plastic-eating bacteria and analyzing photography that documents the racialized environmental violence of plastic production. In so doing, Davis provokes readers to reexamine their relationships to matter and life in light of plastic’s saturation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Research, Theory, Ecology, Science

164 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2022

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 5 out of 5]

love a tight 100 page book. read in two sittings. i think Davis pushes the theory 'material feminism' to its most effective direction, and thinking with plastic and plasticity in this way is really helpful. great little book.

[Margaryta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plastic Matter is a short and concentrated book, the kind I am always delighted to come across. It reads very easily. It uses some examples of artworks/real-life events to illustrate the discussion, but not too many. More often, Davis engages with other theorists and their ideas. Also interesting is the framing of the book - the preface and conclusion are more personal than academic. Here, Davis engages with her own background, addressing her white middle-class upbringing and the privilege that comes with that, and how said background connects to the history of plastic and the language of plasticity. I hope this book is taught in colleges and universities because I think it would spark interest and discussion in students. It is accessible, thoughtful, and self-aware in ways that I think more course texts need to be.

[Jack Lyell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shoutout to the seven pages of bibliography at the end. This is if nothing else a huge testament to research. This is a human-focused look at plastic-- while it does go into environmental effect and loss, its focus is squarely on the implications of continued human interaction with plastic. And it is, in that way, a very tight volume. Personally engaged by explorations of plastic and whiteness, as well as relationality between plastic and its weird intersections with queerness at the same time as it intersects with business and systems of hierarchy. Really screwy industrial bastard child.

[Larissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

so insightful on plastic theory in the present age and the future of plastic in our society

[Sarah Phenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of 2025. I loved the synthesis of queerness, environmental toxicity and the ways in which we are our landscape. Looking at our current times within the lens of plastic!

[Joel Gn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it draws on a variety of philosophical perspectives and compelling case studies, Davis' thesis on the plastic condition is not without its speculative shortfalls. For example (and much depends on which point on the spectrum of critical theory you come from), the connections between plasticity and racism and settler colonialism need to be substantiated, while the resolutions concerning plastic's environmental and broader socio-political harms are at best, ambiguous if not arbitrary.