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In The Practice of Misuse, Raymond Malewitz uses an eclectic mixture of Marxist-influenced materialism and the Heideggerian distinction between a thing and an object-the primary basis for an approach he and several others call thing theory-in order to define what he calls "rugged consumerism." He asserts that the rugged consumer uses objects in ways not originally intended, and it would be fair to say that his approach is itself an example at the level of theorizing the social and artistic movement of the rugged consumers he describes. A bit like the bricoleur who works with what is at hand, by creatively modifying the function and form of consumer objects rugged consumers in Malewitz's analysis repurpose and thus misuse objects with the ultimate goal of destabilizing the supposedly natural practices of late-capitalist consumerism. It is worth noting that Malewitz does not make explicit use of object-oriented ontology, nor does he engage as closely with Heidegger as one might expect-for example, through Heidegger's well-known essay "The Question Concerning Technology" and its notions of enframing and standing-reserve. As far as Heidegger goes, Malewitz's main source supporting thing theory is the well-used hammer of Being and Time.
If his use of Heidegger is somewhat restricted, his examples are not. They range widely, stretching from a creatively misused paper clip (bent into a new form to help reset his router) to the Watts...