Disposability writes off people as depreciated consumption goods.

Evidence

Disposability, by the same token, is rendered acutely ambiguous. Throwaway things: commodities, the no longer useful, clutter, all up for sale to become someone else’s at one’s profit. Disposable people or groups, those who can be discarded because no longer (if ever) considered useful. Perhaps outliving their usefulness or having never lived up to a demand for it. But also collateral damage in wars, or the discardables, los olvidados, the throwaways of the urban landscape. The new or new old races of our time. Disposability, in short, signals the disposition to write off people as depreciated consumption goods, reverse-engineering people through their massification into the base metal of presumptive groups, marked by a debased character all their own. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1880 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Responsibilized individuals remain disposable when economic exigencies require it — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 417; Disposability writes off people as depreciated consumption goods via group massification — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1881; Freire showed dispossessed people living off society’s garbage — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1092 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Race marks people as depreciated consumption goods to be written off #expands (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1880