Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart investigates the ways in which thinking through the contemporary hybrid artistico-scientific practices of bioart is a biophilosophical practice, one that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of life than we encounter in mainstream academic discourse. When examined from a Deleuzian feminist perspective and in dialogue with contemporary bioscience, bioartistic projects reveal the inadequacy of asking about life’s essence. They expose the enmeshment between the living and non-living, organic and inorganic, and, ultimately, life and death. (...) Instead of examining the defining criteria of life, bioartistic practices explore and enact life as processual, differential, and always already uncontainable, thus transcending preconceived material and conceptual boundaries. In this way, this doctoral thesis concentrates on the ontology of life as it emerges through the selected bioartworks: “semi-living” sculptures created by The Tissue Culture and Art Project and the performance May the Horse Live in Me by L’Art Orienté Objet. The hope is that such an ontology can enable future conceptualisations of an ethico-politics that avoids the anthropocentric logic dominant in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Myra Hird and Harlan Weaver have been invited by the editors of this special issue to enter into discussion with each other – to conduct a series of interchanges – because of the careful attention their research has paid to the ways in which transness as a lived reality is ontologized in humans, non-human animals, bacteria, and viruses. With this issue’s interchanges, we would like to further the conversation on critically approaching the consequences of merging transness with animality. In the (...) following series of four essay questions, we particularly invited each of these scholars to consider moments of classificatory tension in which taxonomies of human and non-human become inflected and redirected by the categories of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and geopolitical location. (shrink)

The idea of ‘arts of vulnerability’ (AoV) reclaims the fact of being inherently open (never sealed) and becomes a tool to navigate such a lack of closure. It is art because it comes from art practice, and it is of vulnerability because it comes from materials that are vulnerable and defy control. The idea is rooted in bioart practice understood as artistic research and read through feminist and queer studies about embodiment and ecology. This article traces how the artwork series (...) Wombs contributed to the development of the idea. AoV is a way of understanding art practice, yet it becomes an ethical and intellectual tool that pays attention (and tribute) to more-than-human ethics and aesthetics. It may thus contribute to a critical discussion of today’s surging ecological complexity. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore non-human multispecies interactions in soils polluted by electronic waste and subsequently bioremediated by plants and microbes. I argue that regenerative transformation in polluted soil environments is principally through microbial degradation, a significant process for survival amidst disaster. In doing so, I combine two separate research areas – the materiality of electronic waste and of soils – thus contributing to theorization on the persistent problem of anthropogenically polluted soils. I do so by examining the process of (...) bioremediation, which ties anthropogenic pollution with underground soil processes, notably those that occur at the soil interface surrounding plant roots, the rhizosphere. Using empirical examples from scientific literature on the bioremediation of electronic waste-contaminated soils in China, I demonstrate that degradation, symbiosis, and sequestration are instrumental processes in polluted soils. The micro-scaled perspective of these relational processes and their toxic alterlives contributes to materialist, chemosocial understandings of toxic and polluted environments. (shrink)

In the article, we set out to develop the contours of a general containerology, interrogating containment as a technology and an ontological condition that shapes human and more-than-human relations. While exploring containment technologies as spatio-temporal devices of ordering vis-à-vis leakage, we nevertheless stress how containment inevitably remains contextual, provisional, and leaky at best. Addressing the selective permeability of containers, we also discuss the relation between contained interiorities and exteriorities as processes of articulations between milieus. We problematise the opposition and incommensurability (...) between containment and leakage, and instead insist on conceiving them as co-constitutive. Ultimately, we outline an affirmative, positive take on containment beyond exclusionary inclusion, in contrast to prevailing negative conceptions and practices. (shrink)

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been identified as posing risks to reproductive health and may have intergenerational effects. However, responses to the potential harms they pose frequently rely on medicalised understandings of the body and normative gender identities. This article develops an intersectional feminist framework of intergenerational justice in response to the potential risks posed by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. We examine critiques of endocrine disruptors from feminist, critical disability and queer standpoints, and explore issues of race and class in exposures. We argue that (...) responding to the risks posed by endocrine disruptors such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and phthalates requires developing a theory of intergenerational justice that recognises relationality and transcorporeality, and that also recognises harm in terms of suffering, not in terms of difference. (shrink)

This article suggests how Michael Thompson’s Rubbish Theory, specifically the model of the life cycle of rubbish, might be applied to the dystopian workplace environments of George Saunders’s surreal and, often, dystopian collection Pastoralia. Pastoralia foregrounds rubbish through depictions of live waste, wasted lives, and waste disposal methods within the workplace. I focus on the short stories “Pastoralia” and “Sea Oak” to reveal the mechanisms behind the conversion of human employee to human waste both in, and out of, the workplace. (...) I suggest how waste-theory further advances our understanding of Saunders’s fiction as the literary depictions of human waste in the workplace function as a critique of the dominant ideologies that govern American culture. (shrink)