Sarah Hodges, Warwick

This paper charts the material history of plastics in contemporary India–from rare item to ubiquitous material—and its corollary moral history of anxieties about plastics in general, and plastic carry bags in particular. In it, I suggest that plastic bags constitute a ubiquitous but relatively under examined connective sinew between the abstract formation of caste and untouchability in urban settings, one the one hand, and on the other hand, its many material instantiations. Through a consideration of the 'haptics' [politics and phenomenology of touch] that animates the social and economic lives of plastic, I explore what it might mean to consider plastic carry bags as a skin of the city. I also explore use the possible analyses of this beguilingly banal object as a way into a broader set of investigations into the production of space in everyday India. To anticipate the argument somewhat, the contest over these objects—plastic bags—points to a vexed pleasure as the spectre of the ‘dalit’ heart of new India’s commitment to retail therapy. Given that one among several dominant discourses about urban space in India is the claim that cities are places where caste can be shed—the claim that cities are neutral if not downright caste anonymous—contests over plastic bags help to point to how that may not the case.