Shoddy

From Devil's Dust to the Renaissance of Rags

Hanna Rose Shell

$44.95

Hardback

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English

University of Chicago Press
03 September 2020

British & Irish history; History of the Americas; Textile industries; Conservation of the environment

Series: Science.Culture

The history of modern-day old clothes recycling begins with a thing called shoddy. Starting in the early 1800s, shoddy was the name given to a new material made from reclaimed wool, and to one of the earliest forms of industrial recycling. Old rags and leftover fabric clippings were ground to bits by a machine known as “the devil” and then re-used. Usually undisclosed, shoddy–also known as reworked wool–became suit jackets, army blankets, mattress stuffing, and much more. Shoddy is the afterlife of rags. And Shoddy, the book, reveals hidden worlds of textile intrigue.

In Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags, Hanna Rose Shell takes readers on a journey to discover shoddy, from Haiti to the “shoddy towns” of West Yorkshire in England, to the United States, back in time to the British cholera epidemics and the American Civil War, and into agricultural fields, textile labs, and rag-shredding factories. Shell’s narrative is both literary and historical, drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, from court cases to military uniforms, mattress labels to medical textbooks, political cartoons to high art. Shoddy moves between genres, bringing richly drawn characters and unexpected objects to life. Along the way, shoddy becomes equally an evocative object and a portal into another world.

Almost since the time it first appeared, shoddy was both ubiquitous and controversial. In part because it was often so hard to detect, it was inherently suspicious. Public health experts worried about sanitation and disease—how could old clothes be disinfected? As well, the idea of wearing someone else’s old clothes so close to your own skin was discomforting in and of itself. Could you sleep peacefully knowing that your mattress was very likely to be stuffed with dead soldiers’ overcoats? The use of the term “virgin” wool, the idea of virginity in relation to clothes, in fact emerged as an effort by the wool industry to counter shoddy’s appeal: to make shoddy seem shoddy. Over time, shoddy would capture a host of personal, ethical, commercial, and societal failings. And yet, there was always, within shoddy, the alluring concept of regeneration, of what we today think of as conscious clothing, eco-fashion, sustainable textiles.

Shell exposes an interwoven tale of industrial espionage, political infighting, scientific inquiry, ethnic prejudices, and war profiteering. Discarded clothes may make many journeys over the course of several lifetimes. Not only in your garments, but under your rug, in your mattress pads, piano blankets, in the peculiar confetti-like stuffing in your mailing envelopes, even in the insulation in your walls. Though it began with wool, over the past century the shredding “devil” has turned to synthetics from nylon stockings to Kevlar. Shoddy is likely connected to something you are wearing right now. After reading, you will never use the word shoddy or think about your clothes, the environment, sustainability, or the intermingled world around you the same way again.

By: Hanna Rose Shell
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780226377759
ISBN 10: 022637775X
Series: Science.Culture
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 03 September 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Prologue: Finding Shoddy Old Clothes Odyssey The Heap Act I: Devil’s Dust Emergence of an Industry Narratives of Transmutation, Myths of Invention Devil’s Dust Politics Material Philosophy and the Shredded Self Shoddy as Paradox and Marx’s “Excrements of Consumption” Act II: Textile Skin The Wear of War Textile Skin and “the Sinews of War” Shoddy and the Body Politic Photography and the “Harvest of Death” On Shrouds and Shoddy Act III: Lively Things Miasma and Contagion Consolidation of Clothes and Corpses Disinfection and Its Discontents The Intimate Materiality of the Unknowable Liveliness and Formlessness Epilogue: Shoddy Renaissance Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index

Hanna Rose Shell is associate professor in the Department of Art & Art History, the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts, and the History Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author, most recently, of Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance and a director of the film Secondhand [Pepe].

Reviews for Shoddy: From Devil's Dust to the Renaissance of Rags

Shoddy is that rare book that takes you from the direct experiences you share with the author (what to do with your used clothes? the feeling of 'doing good' when you donate them to clothe someone 'less fortunate') to the larger social, economic, historical, and yes, moral universe in which those experiences live. Shell brings gives us this kind of journey by searching for shoddy. Through her we learn about the human costs of the industrial revolution, learn about British Chartism, the economic realities of the American Civil War, learn about the ideas that animated dissent--Carlyle, Disraeli, and Marx, just for a start, and so much more, all through the eyes of shoddy. It is an exemplary book in its use of the visual record to weave a narrative that implicates current practice, not just in how we do scholarship across a range of fields in media and science and technology studies, but how we think about ourselves. Shoddy is a book that will change your mind. --Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age