Discarded Selves: Obsolescence in the Age of Presentism

Amid the rise of seductive, present-tense goods, the obsolete names what the present cannot assimilate: a forgotten one-hit-wonder, a now-unacceptable remark, or a teenage memory too awkward to reclaim. Yet it is precisely through these encounters with obsolete attachments that a different experience of time becomes possible. Discarded Selves shows that obsolescence is not only a condition imposed on objects and media but a temporal and affective logic internalized within the self. In cultures driven by disposability and the imperative to remain up-to-date, we continually shed former attachments, affects, and versions of ourselves. But these discarded selves persist: they return as intimate, time-stamped remnants that unsettle the fantasy of a seamless present.

Through close readings across literature, film, digital culture, and everyday practices—from decluttering and ragpicking to the disquieting experience of unexpectedly running into an ex or confronting long-forgotten diary entries—Discarded Selves shows how narratives grapple with past material that no longer fits yet refuses to disappear. These moments expose a discontinuity at the core of contemporary selfhood, where the obsolete becomes a site for thinking temporal rupture. When the past is either neglected or recycled into the present, encounters with the obsolete bring our temporal and material others into view in that intimate moment of “no longer.”