The Afterlife of Used Things

Using the concept of "recycling" as a means to revisit the economic, social, cultural, scientific, and artistic processes that characterized the eighteenth century, this volume investigates how practices of salvaging and repurposing shed new light on a century where novelty and innovation are often thought to prevail, returning to such apparently well-known notions as consumption, the new science, or novel writing to cast them in a new light where the waste of some becomes the luxury of others, clothes worn to rags are turned into paper and into books, and scientific breakthroughs are made using old kitchen pans.