The purpose of this volume is to address the notion of cultural recycling by assessing its
applicability to various modes of cultural and theoretical discourse. The word recycling is
here used collectively to denote phenomena such as cyclicity repetition recurrence renewal
reuse reproduction etc. which seem to be inalienable from basic cultural processes. Part of
our purpose in proposing this theme is a desire to trace confront interrogate and theorise
the surviving phantoms of newness and paradigms of creativity or dreams of originality and to
consider the need a necessity perhaps to overcome or sustain them and further to estimate
the possibility of cultural survival if it turns out as it may that culture is forever to
remain an endless recurrence of the same.
