11 Plastics Talk/Talking Plastics The Communicative Power of Plasticity

Plastics carry stories with them, whether in their diverse types or as the more generic, catch-all category of plastic stuff. In the Philippines, that generic version of plastics might convey an even stronger message about social class and distinction than in many more developed countries (Bensaude-Vincent 2013; Fisher 2015; Wilkes 2015). For wealthy Filipinos, plastics are the detritus of colonial globalization and the toxic materiality of deprivation. In the public discourse on plastics, people tend to reduce diverse and ubiquitous plastic materials to a single category of plastic that contains predominantly the single-use plastics consumed by the poor. Plastics become a site of moral panic about the behaviours and living conditions of poorer Filipinos. Poor people who cannot access solid waste disposal services fill the air with toxins when they burn these plastics in their garbage piles and block the waterways with them, creating flooding. The poor fill the streets with this waste, too, when they discard packaging purchased from sidewalk vendors or throw it out of windows of public buses onto roadsides after they have eaten their snacks. Discarded moulded plastic items such as garden chairs and buckets that do not easily burn make their way into canals and rivers. Metaphorically, all of these plastics—mostly single use but also broken durables—are the stuff that blocks national progress. Plastics mark a kitschy and tacky—in Filipino baduy—popular aesthetic associated with the lower classes. Most of the highly educated elites in the Philippines are reluctant to buy plastics and unlikely to decorate with them, preferring authentic Filipino natural materials such as rattan and bamboo, ceramic and wood, where they can find them.

Poorer households, in contrast, embrace plastics. The poor tend to collect cheerful, colourful, and inexpensive plastic items. The accumulation of things made possible by inexpensive plastics gives poor people a sense of abundance and thus material security. Plastics give them what they need to get by, store food and water, keep themselves relatively dry and comfortable, and inject colour into often dank and grey dwellings made from wood, concrete, and galvanized iron.

There is far more to the problem of plastics in the Philippines than the propensity of people to throw them away, ruin the landscape aesthetic, and introduce them into water systems, oceans, and food chains. The word plastic itself—in Filipino plastik—indexes Filipino critiques of character and social relations with a collective noun. Plastik carries a set of social critiques that revolve around class, solidarity, and ideals for charity. Making craft items or artworks in plastics then makes these critiques material. Because poor people often already have craft skills and are frequently underemployed, their free time is easily put into adapting these skills to repurpose discarded plastics. So the poor often make, remake, or purchase plastic items that are distinctively kitsch and not considered “proper” items but cheap alternatives. Indeed, that is the connotation of the word plastik.

An anonymous Filipino blogger explains that the word “connotes something cheap: plastics slippers, plastics shoes, plastics watch bands, etc. It used to have that meaning too in Filipino: ‘Naku, mura lang ’yang platong iyan. Plastics kasi.’ [‘Oh, that plate is only cheap. Because it’s only plastic’]. It was a cheap substitute for breakable drinking glasses, leather shoes, leather watch bands and the like” (2008, 1). As in other parts of the world, the word plastik does not just identify the material but also acts as a metaphor for the cheap, fake, and undesirable in human relationships. The word is also used as an adjective meaning hypocritical or fake. The blogger goes on to explain that “plastik in Filipino now captures that behavior (thought, act, feeling) which is quite the opposite of what one truly feels. It carries more than the sense of being not just ‘not really,’ but more—it also signifies ‘not truly.’”

Thus, in the Philippines, the word plastik carries a sense of falsity or lack of genuine intent, as the insult “plastic” did in the American counterculture of the 1960s (Bensaude-Vincent 2013, 240). People say “Hoy, hindi ako plastik, ha!” (Hey, I’m not plastik, eh?) to assert their sincerity in interactions with others. Such interpretations of plastics are common across the world. In the Philippines, too, plastik is often associated with the hypocrisy that the rich display in their everyday encounters with the poor. As Bensaude-Vincent (2013, 19) argues, “the alliance between one material and one function—still visible in common language within phrases such as ‘a glass of wine’—was seen as a mark of superiority” in the West, and this remains true in the Philippines. However, as more plastics have come into circulation, there are more and better fakes and tricksters. These materials mean that the poor can afford to have items that are just as nice or useful as those of the rich. They mean, too, that the ability to distinguish between the “real” and the “fake” on which the rich pride themselves is called into question. The rich are thus not that much more capable than, or different from, the poor. By extension, craft or art objects made from plastics can misrepresent the social position of their creator or somehow make a fool of the viewer or purchaser. Using plastic items is thus a way of speaking not only about class but also about inauthenticity and resistance in relations between classes. Plastics are not neutral substrates. Rather, they are “doing politics” as active co-producers of socio-economic and cultural categories. In this way, plastics can be said to talk.

If plastics are the key materials of the new global world, then it is a world where stuff is increasingly not what it seems to be (Barry 2015). The Filipino word plastik is closely aligned with the idea of peyk (fake) as opposed to jinwayn (genuine). Many fake items, indeed, are made from plastics, including beads that replicate originals made from ceramic, semi-precious stones, or glass and acquired through long-distance trade (McKay and colleagues 2015). When it comes to these heirloom trade beads, Indigenous Filipinos consider that it is vulnerable or foolish people who cannot distinguish between the real and the fake. People who lack the hands-on experience from handling materials themselves are the ones most likely to be “taken in” by fakes made from plastics. The expert artisans who make plastic crafts, conversely, can play with the ideas of authenticity attached to plastics as a metaphor for Indigeneity and progress. Their first-hand knowledge of materials, old and new, gives them a kind of political power.

Plastic replica trade beads comprised one of the most engaging “fake” craft items that our team collected for Everyday Objects (figure 11.2). These beads were made from repurposed plastics extracted from waste and melted down to create replicas of the antique trade beads that entered the islands in the colonial era. People from the Igorot ethnic groups of the northern Cordillera region of the Philippine island of Luzon have been making replica beads from old toothbrushes since the 1950s. More recently, they have begun to experiment with materials gleaned from a variety of other forms of plastic waste, including CD cases, coat hangers, and fast-food spoons.

Strands of these plastic replica beads made from domestic waste plastics are for sale in Baguio City. Their intended market is Igorot high school and college students who, as part of their education, are expected to take part in cultural performances. Strung according to Kalinga traditional patterns but used by other ethnic groups to express broader Igorot identities, these beads replicate strands of glass and stone heirloom trade beads. The trade beads themselves are a definitive aspect of the material culture of the Kalinga ethnic group of northern Luzon and serve specific ritual purposes in life-cycle events (Abellera 1981). Brightly coloured trade beads made from stone, ceramic, and glass were used as a currency to exchange for goods and services during the colonial era (sixteenth to twentieth centuries). Among Igorots, the original beads still serve as a store of familial wealth since they are valuable heirlooms passed down to the next generation and worth thousands of dollars. The plastic replicas, however, are extremely useful for the expanding calendar of cultural presentations and ethnic events attached to education and local politics. Replica beads thus replicate what are important traditional markers of ethnic identity and social status, but sometimes, too, they fake them when they are worn by people who are not descendants of the traditional Igorot kadangyan elite.

Only elite families could give female performers a full set of authentic trade beads, worth several thousand dollars, but anyone can purchase several replica strands for a few tens of dollars. The abundance of beads made possible by plastics has made Kalinga dance performances both more colourful and more equitable. Rather than only two or three performers with “complete” sets of beads, replicas mean that all dancers can appear in similar “full” ethnic costumes. As one of the dancers whom Deirdre interviewed explained, “We really dance our culture, not our class system. What fun would it be to dance as nawotwot [poor] when you can just buy beads like this? It’s a representation only, sure, but it’s good to see all the colours when all the girls move—it’s so graceful. The beads, they really attract you to look. And it means we can all be there, the same, representing our place.” Plastic replica beads thus talk about authentic Indigenous identity and femininity in ways that, politically, build Indigenous solidarity across classes. Poor people can dance as rich people with the replica beads, and rich people can leave their real beads in glass cases and dance with the replicas for reasons of comfort and security. Replica beads blur the class system through their materiality.

These plastic replica beads also travel around the world, accompanying migrants from the Cordillera region when they move for work or education. The beads carry with them messages about contemporary Igorot cultural potency. They also carry messages about solid waste management problems on the Igorot Ancestral Domain. Without a reliable domestic collection system or an incinerator, much of the domestic waste in the region goes into landfills along the Chico River. If broken CD cases do not become replica beads, then they are likely to enter the river and break up, with ever-smaller pieces eventually working their way north into the Pacific Ocean. So the beads also speak to the ways in which culture can reappropriate global waste. Culture is then used to deploy the symbolism of waste in Indigenous political struggles at both the local scale and the global scale.

In London, when Deirdre spoke with Igorot migrant dancers at cultural events, she saw that they were mixing their real trade beads and plastic replicas with abandon to create luxuriant displays (McKay 2016). Here migrants were concerned about material authenticity—which were the real beads and traditional patterns? Deirdre learned that telling the real beads from the fake beads created anxiety for those migrants who had grown up in families too poor to have retained their own inherited trade beads. The most common story was that the family had fallen on hard times and had sold the real beads in the 1960s or 1970s to fund education, medical expenses, or house building. But now people wanted their real beads back as a way of expressing pride in their culture, and they wanted to be sure that they got real ones.

Taking advantage of this desire, other migrants were selling plastic replica beads to their friends at prices closer to those for glass replicas or original ceramic or stone beads. In response to questions about why she was asking to photograph performers’ beads (McKay and colleagues 2015), Deirdre explained that she was interested in the combination of real and fake on display. Later she showed migrants involved in these Igorot cultural performances what she had learned from plastic bead producers and bead-wearing Kalinga performers in the Philippines. Check the temperature of the bead on your skin, because plastics always feel warmer than glass, stone, or ceramic. When you rub the bead against your teeth, the reworked plastic feels rough against your enamel. In terms of weight, the plastic bead is light. When you look at how it reflects the light, a plastic bead is comparatively dull beside glass, stone, and ceramic beads. Then examine the bead for inclusions or irregularities. Should an inclusion look like soot, it is most likely a bead made from plastic that has been melted down over a fire.

Plastic fakes can fool people unfamiliar with the real materials of authentic beads. The ability to distinguish between fake and real was an acquired skill. Back in the Philippines, the bead makers whom Deirdre had interviewed were experimenting with different waste plastics all the time and attending traditional and contemporary ritual or performance events at which people wore these beads. Bead makers found it very easy to distinguish plastic, glass, stone, and ceramic beads. They were amazed that Deirdre found it difficult but taught her the distinctions. From their Igorot perspective, Westerners and urbanites taken in by fake beads seemed to be ill-educated materially. The daily familiarity among bead makers with plastic materials that they struggled to break up, incinerate, bury, or repurpose gave them a wealth of expertise from which to draw.

Plastics, in this context, were talking not only about class but also about street smarts, life experiences, intelligence, and materials nous. Bead makers, buyers, and wearers were usually women, and it was often a woman’s task to sort the reworkable plastic materials from the general garbage. Many Igorot migrants either came from urban areas with waste collection systems or migrated while young. Either way they had not grown up with the materials nous required to sort and repurpose garbage plastics. They were anxious about being potentially fooled by fake beads, for that would suggest somehow that they lacked the requisite knowledge to locate themselves in the centre of Indigenous diasporic politics. Back in the Philippines, however, plastics were related to Igorot men’s gender identities in more potently subversive ways.

Another compelling set of plastic craft objects that our team collected for Everyday Objects was composed of plastic backpacks. They were woven basket-style bags in bright yellow plastics with pink and red trim. These basketry backpacks originated in the gold mines beyond Baguio City where they were woven from the discarded plastic wrappers of electric blasting caps, likely beginning in the 1960s. Their makers were artisans who worked as miners in nearby gold mines. They wove the backpacks on breaks from their work, sitting in the mine tunnels and repurposing waste created by the activities of global capital on the local landscape to their own cultural ends. Because the backpacks could not be produced on a commercial scale, they had no fixed market prices. Nevertheless, they were a key element of Baguio City’s male Igorot “street style.” Men who wore these backpacks were miners themselves, members of their extended families, and those who wished to show solidarity with miners and their Indigenous communities. The street-style plastic backpacks collected by the team usually had come to their eventual owners through barter or exchange.

These backpacks were extremely distinctive accessories. The pink and yellow plastics from the blasting cap wrappers stood out like beacons against an Igorot craft tradition that features the soft beiges and browns of rattan and bamboo. As plastic craft items made from material appropriated from mine sites, the backpacks spoke of the capacity and cultural potency of a group of male labourers doing dirty, dangerous, and poorly paid work. They also positioned these men as bearers of a proud Igorot culture that gave them the knowledge and skill to make something desirable out of the detritus of globalization. Garish compared with the “authentic” natural fibre versions, the plastic backpacks asserted an Indigenous identity in which other Indigenous people—particularly men—wanted to share. It was precisely because their plastic trim was eye-catching and “feminine”—pink, red, and yellow—that these items had become “cool” accessories for Indigenous men.

The thrill of queering the accepted version of masculine self-presentation turned up in our interviews with artisans and wearers. Hector, one of our interviewees, explained that he had styled his backpack with an all-black ensemble to show off its colours:

Me, I like the way it looks. You know, it’s the colours for a woman—pink, yellow—but made by men. And mining is a hard work, you know, earning money if you have it. … If not, then nothing. … You know, … they can make something like this from … just basuro [garbage]; it shows that they can really survive. They can survive just anything, you know. That’s us, Igorot men. We can mine, we can work in the city, but we don’t need somebody to pay us. We have the skills. We can go back to farming, build our own house, build our own … just anything. … Our skills let us make the things we need, without money, without shopping. That’s us. And when you see that colourful backpack, you know, that guy—with him, you’ll be just ok, whatever happens. He can live just anywhere. (McKay and Perez 2018, 181)

Using feminine-coloured plastics for men’s accessories—rather than the blues, browns, and black more strongly associated with men—is subversive in a wider Filipino society. There material markers of success in sombre colours or precious metals are privileged in measuring men’s accomplishments (Johnson 2017). Mainstream (non-Igorot) Filipinos tend to look to watches, clothing, cars, jewellery, housing, and the like to see how potent a man might be. They look for well-known brands and expensive, authentic, imported materials such as leather or steel. A yellow, pink, and red backpack resists this definition of success, staking a claim to cultural continuity and practical nous as a site of Indigenous male self-confidence. Displaying mastery of manual skills has long been a working-class approach to performing masculinity (Maynard 1989, cited in McKay 2011), but making plastic backpacks is about more than the usual Filipino diskarte (creativity) and know-how. Plastic backpacks subvert dominant Filipino masculinity with materiality and colour because they are both made of plastics—potentially fake—and read as feminine. Even elite visitors to our Everyday Objects exhibition puzzled over how their garish colours fit with the evident machismo displayed in the photographs of the men who wove and wore them. However, it was self-evident to all of the exhibition visitors that any man who traversed a cosmopolitan city like Baguio wearing a pink and yellow plastic backpack had to have enough self-control not to succumb to the provocations of others. He had to be ultramacho so that he could deal with any negative comments but with a soft side that he was happy to show.

By bringing waste plastics together with a traditional Igorot basket form, the plastic backpack problematized both masculinity and tradition. This plastic object held in productive tension the ideas of Indigenous tradition and global garbage. To this problematic, it added a second and parallel tension, one between dominant and alternative Igorot versions of Filipino masculinity. The plastic backpack positioned Igorot men at the intersection of two masculine modes of being, revealing masculinity to be likewise malleable and even suggesting that mainstream masculinity might be plastik or hypocritical. For men in a marginal cultural space, wearing plastic backpacks positions them as central to Indigenous resistance to a dominant culture that would marginalize the poor, unskilled, and left behind and as capable of making their way in a global world. Plastics carry this message for them.