Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode Title: Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Date: November 23, 2025
Host: Adam Bobeck
Guest: Heather Davis, Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at the New School

Overview

In this episode, Adam Bobeck interviews Heather Davis about her book Plastic Matter. The conversation explores the cultural, philosophical, and ecological dimensions of plastics: their origins, their roles in shaping our world and subjectivities, and their ties to broader issues of colonialism, temporality, gender, and queerness. Davis discusses why we need to think differently about plastic’s role in our lives, how it embodies deep social and material logics, and what queer theory offers to ecological critique. The episode journeys from the personal and familial to the planetary, offering both critical analysis and imaginative reframings.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Relationship to Plastic

• Plastic’s Ubiquity: Davis describes plastic as “one of the most intimate manifestations of our relationships to oil,” present in almost every facet of modern life—from clothing to baby bottles to computer networks. (02:03)
• Family History: Her grandfather was a chemical engineer at DuPont, involved in developing the plastic milk bag—illustrating plastic’s roots in industrial logic more than in consumer demand. Her grandmother helped test these at home, yet her labor went unrecognized:

  "He would always exclude my grandmother’s participation...despite the fact that she was so instrumental." (06:34)

• Gendered Labor: The story underlines the erasure of women’s contributions in technological innovation, and prompts Davis’s broader question of inheritance: what do we do with the world—and materials—we inherit?
• Inheritance as Concept: Drawing on Derrida, Davis frames inheritance (“always before us, not in the past”) as structuring our identity and responsibilities. (07:33)

2. The Concept of "Plastic Matter"

• Philosophical Underpinnings: Plastic matter is both a description and a concept: “a recursive relationship between the desire for matter to be plastic…and what I mean by that is all matter.” (08:35)
• Matter as Plasticity: The advent of plastics marked the rise of molecular engineering—the notion that matter could, and should, be shaped at will. This way of seeing matter underpins much of modern science and industry.
• Plastic’s Feedback Loop: “Plastic matter describes this recursive relationship” where philosophical assumptions produce plastic, and plastic then reshapes our assumptions about matter. (11:50)

3. Plastic Pollution and Colonialism

• Pollution as Colonial Logic: Davis credits Max Liboiron’s “Pollution is Colonialism” (12:06), explaining that the logic of pollution (land as available for disposal, toxicity, etc.) presupposes settler colonial frameworks.

  “You don’t have [the] ability [to pollute] without the fundamental understanding that the land is infinitely available…conditioned by settler colonialism.” (13:11)

• Universalization and Extraction: Plastic is designed to be a “universal” product, indifferent to place and context, exacerbating colonial logics of extraction and dispossession.
• Plasticity of Land: The urge to “make land plastic”—terraforming, altering ecosystems to fit European ideals—results in ongoing ecological devastation.

4. Queer Agency of Plastic

• Material Queerness: Plastics’ unpredictability and strange behavior (e.g., microbes consuming plastics, the formation of the Plastisphere) make it “queer” in a material sense.

  “One of the things that becomes really apparent when you start looking into plastic is…its weirdness.” (18:55)

• Containment vs. Proliferation: Plastics reflect a desire to contain and separate, but ironically, they disperse everywhere—including deep within our bodies.
• Metaphorical Queerness: The language used to denigrate plastics (cheap, flashy, toxic) mirrors pejoratives used against queer people, reinforcing the metaphorical resonance. (24:32)

5. Queer Values and Ecology

• Chosen Family and Expanded Care: Drawing on Nicole Seymour, Davis argues queer values emphasize care for those beyond kin—extended to non-human beings and ecosystems.

  “If we are going to be expanding our families…why not expand that outwards to non-human species as well?” (27:09)

• Political Implications: Skepticism toward the state among queer communities leads to grassroots, mutual forms of care—useful models for environmental action in the face of institutional inaction.

6. The Symbolic Logic of "The Child" in Environmental Politics

• The Child as Future: Building on Lee Edelman and Rebecca Sheldon, Davis notes the child often stands in for the future, but typically in ways that reproduce existing social and economic logics:

  “Saving the planet for the children…is not about actually creating a livable world…[but] about reproducing the logics of petrocapitalism.” (31:02)

• Shoring up Privilege: The “child” is invoked to justify maintaining the status quo—home ownership, consumption, heteronormativity—rather than transformative change.

7. Petrotime and Plastic Temporality

• Compressed and Disjointed Time: Plastic disrupts the temporal order: it compresses geological time (fossil fuel origins), then becomes products we use briefly, but persists for centuries.

  “The cheapest materials…have these incredibly long-reaching existences.” (36:34)

• Temporal Lags: Davis discusses how harm can appear generations after exposure, complicating ethical and legal accountability.
• Multiple Colliding Temporalities: Plastics force us to confront “multiple colliding temporalities”—the present, deep past, and unresolved futures. (41:49)

8. Apocalypse as an Evasion of Responsibility

• Apocalyptic Thinking: Davis warns that apocalypse narratives can function as an excuse to abdicate responsibility—"a way to avoid responsibility."

  “In our contemporary imagination…we’re presented with these worlds that are completely and utterly uninhabitable, and then…reproduce the social order.” (43:26)

• Endless Presentism: Rather than a dramatic end, harm from plastics accrues slowly, unevenly, and often invisibly, especially impacting those least responsible.

9. Queer Toxicity

• Plastics and Bodily Change: Since the 1930s, plastics are known to disrupt hormones (“queering the body”)—e.g., lowering sperm counts, “feminization” of male fetuses (48:45).
• Moral Panic: This triggers reactionary anxieties to uphold patriarchal, white-supremacist structures.
• Embracing Enmeshment: Toxicity, while harmful, reveals the porousness of bodies and our inherent interconnection with the world.

  “Logics of containment are completely undone by toxicity…our bodies are porous. They’re open to the world.” (52:37)

• Transformative Possibilities: Some forms of queering and adaptation may be survival strategies, not just threats.

10. Closing Reflections

• Beyond Apocalypse: Despite the frightening topics, Davis resists apocalyptic fatalism and advocates for sitting with complexity.
• New Work: Her next project will expand on “petrotime,” tracing fossil fuels’ effects on temporality, modernity, and politics—“how do we rethink politics away from that kind of understanding?” (57:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Inheritance:
  “We can’t…live our lives without plastic…our job is to figure out what to carry from an inheritance and what to move forward with.” —Heather Davis (07:18)

• On Pollution and Colonialism:
  “You don’t have the ability to pollute without this fundamental understanding that the land is infinitely available to be used and…polluted.” —Heather Davis (13:11)

• On Queer Ecology:
  “Queer values, caring not just about the individual…the most effective ecological values.” —Heather Davis, quoting Nicole Seymour (26:10)

• On Plastic’s Temporalities:
  “We’re caught in that presentism at the same time as we’re being asked to think about the deep time nature of oil, at the same time as…what is going to happen generations from now that maybe has not yet even appeared as a kind of harm.” (41:49)

• On Apocalypse:
  “The problem with the end is that there’s no sense of…having to rebuild…there’s nothing incumbent upon you to try to do something about making others’ lives as livable as possible while we’re here.” (45:33)

• On Toxicity:
  “Logics of containment are completely undone by toxicity…our bodies are porous. They’re open to the world.” (52:37)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Personal relationship to plastic: 02:03–08:10
• Conceptualizing "plastic matter": 08:17–11:56
• Plastic pollution as colonialism: 12:06–18:41
• Queer agency of plastic: 18:55–25:57
• Queer values in ecology: 26:02–30:35
• Symbolic logic of the child: 30:49–36:10
• Petrotime/Temporalities: 36:14–42:43
• Against apocalyptic narratives: 43:04–48:29
• Queer toxicity: 48:38–54:18
• Closing, next project: 55:02–60:10

Episode Flow & Tone

• Davis is warm, reflective, and incisive—balancing rigorous critique with openness to uncertainty and imaginative possibility.
• The conversation is theoretically rich but accessible, covering philosophy, politics, personal anecdote, and global environmental challenges.
• The tone remains hopeful, resisting despair in face of systemic issues.

Summary for New Listeners

This episode delves into how plastic is not just a material, but also a complex social actor entwined with colonialism, gender, time, and queerness. Heather Davis challenges assumptions about the universality, neutrality, and innocuousness of plastic, urging listeners to reckon with its messy inheritances and live more attentively within its temporal, ecological, and social entanglements. The discussion offers both critical frameworks and generative pathways for thinking and living differently amidst the ongoing plastic crisis.

Recommended for: Anyone interested in environmental studies, cultural theory, queer studies, philosophy of technology, or the everyday realities and politics of living with plastic.