from the archive
Have humans ever been just human?
In 1907, a Belgian chemist named Leo Hendrik Baekeland developed a completely synthetic polymer that could be shaped and molded into any form. The polymer, called “Bakelite,” was formed through a combination of phenol and formaldehyde, and was one of the first iterations of plastic. Bakelite was so versatile and revolutionary it was deemed the “material of a thousand uses.”
![Composite image of (left) catalog cover with multiple pieces of Bakelite jewelry and (right) a couple having breakfast, using Bakelite appliances Composite image of (left) catalog cover with multiple pieces of Bakelite jewelry and (right) a couple having breakfast, using Bakelite appliances](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0169bb18-983c-48e5-bfcf-803e49814bba_750x531.jpeg)
In the picture on the right (above), the ad reads that Bakelite comprises the handle of the coffee pot, the “button under the table…for service,” and the “twin-outlet plug.” Bakelite is everywhere, on everything. The ad boasts of the material’s versatility, but reading this today, it feels like an ominous foreshadowing of plastic’s current overtaking of everyday life. Plastic today is regarded as cheap and obviously ugly. But Bakelite and other plastic variations were widely advertised as glamorous materials throughout the 1930s, as the Great Depression put more expensive, luxury materials out of the question for consumers.
Scientific reports today read that microplastics have been found in every organ of rodent test subjects, including the brain. The implication is that, we, too, are full of microplastics. Across the board, scientists suggest that this is, in fact, pretty bad—though the effects of microplastics in the body are not equivocally agreed upon or generative of enough evidence to come to a substantial conclusion. The fact is, we are at a point where plastic is so extensively used, it’s inescapable. Do we need to, then, learn to accept our attachment to plastic? It’s presence within us is unavoidable, no matter how many glass jars of Erewhon granola we buy.
Humans, I don’t think, have ever only been just human. We’ve always been created by other things, other people, other animals and other species. As Donna Haraway writes in The Companion Species Manifesto, “I am sick to death of bonding through kinship and ‘the family,’ and I long for models of solidarity and human unity and difference rooted in friendship, work, partially shared purposes, intractable collective pain, inescapable mortality, and persistent hope…Ties through blood…have been bloody enough already.”
Plastics, whether we like it or not, are our companions. Even if they’re dangerous, in some way, we need to make kin with them.
what i’m reading and watching this week
Anna Karenina
Elena Knows
Longlegs