Plastic is everywhere, all around us, and yet do we see it? What does the plastic gyre in the North Pacific tell us? Much like climate crisis, often considered intangible, plastic deposition on the surface of the earth is as much invisible as it is visible. In the “Introduction” to Lacan and the Environment (2021), Clint Burnham and Paul Kingsbury invoke the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s famous reference in Seminar XI to a sardine can floating on the waves in the oceans of Brittany. Lacan remembers his friend Petit-Jean saying to him that even though he may see the can, the can does not see him. From the garbage, not seeing the human, Burnham and Kingsbury draw the conclusion that we cannot see the plastic despite that it surrounds us (Burnham and Kingsbury 2021, 5). If we return to Lacan’s text, we see that his point is different....

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