Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice

Reactivating Elements explores the relationship between chemistry and ecology, investigating how elements become entangled with power, control, coloniality, racism, and extractive productivism, and exploring alternative paths to environmental destruction.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 11 January 2022
Publisher: Duke University Press

The contributors to Reactivating Elements delve into the intricate interplay of chemicals with soil, air, water, and fire, shaping Earth's troubled ecologies. They approach the elements with a multifaceted perspective, recognizing them as chemical categories, material substances, social forms, forces, energies, cosmological entities, and epistemic objects. By engaging with the nonlinear historical significance of elemental thought across various fields, including chemistry, the biosciences, engineering, physics, science and technology studies, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and cultural studies, the contributors explore the profound relationship between chemistry and ecology. They investigate the logics that render wind as energy, delve into the affective histories of ubiquitous substances like plastics and radioactive elements, and chart the devastating impact of petrochemical industrialization. Throughout the volume, the contributors shed light on how elements become entangled with power and control, coloniality, racism, and extractive productivism, while also exploring alternative pathways to environmental destruction. In doing so, they reimagine the relationship between the elements and the elemental, human, and more-than-human worlds, shedding light on today's damaged ecosystems and envisioning potential futures.

Contributors.

Patrick Bresnihan, Tim Choy, Joseph Dumit, Cori Hayden, Stefan Helmreich, Joseph Masco, Michelle Murphy, Natasha Myers, Dimitris Papadopoulos, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Astrid Schrader, Isabelle Stengers

Weight: 544g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478013440