10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17994
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2038-3460
17994
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Anna Varfolomeeva
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Natasha Myers (eds.), Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2021
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Book Reviews
2023-09-26
2023-09-13
2023-09-26
2023-09-26
193-195
TS
Anna Varfolomeeva
2023/09/26
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17994
193
University of Helsinki
2038-3460
1
en
195
Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Natasha Myers (eds.), Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2021
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T/S                                                                                   BOOK REVIEWS



Reactivating Elements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice
by Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Natasha Myers (eds.) (2022)
Durham and London, Duke University Press, pp. 295.




Anna Varfolomeeva
University of Helsinki


   Elements of various forms construct the world around us: constituents of the Periodic table, or-
ganic building blocks of life, or ontological forces of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. These basic forms
of organization are crucial for the survival of life. The contributors to the volume Reactivating El-
ements: Chemistry, Ecology, Practice aim to view and analyze elements in their elusiveness and com-
plexity and to unfold what “elemental thought” (p. 1) could mean amid the current ecological crisis.
   All three editors of the volume, as well as many of its contributors, are well situated in the
field of STS. The research of Dimitris Papadopoulos focuses on the intersections between
technoscience and social transformations (Papadopoulos 2018) and the introduction of
green and alternative chemical technologies. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, the author of Matters
of care. Speculative ethics in more than human worlds (2017), currently conducts research on
human-soil relations, particularly in the context of science, eco-social movements, and artistic
practices. Natasha Myers, director of the Plant Studies Collaboratory, has coined the term
“planthropocene” emphasizing a vision of the future rooted in the relationships between
plants and humans (Myers 2017). In addition to editing the volume, Puig de la Bellacasa and
Papadopoulos each contributed a chapter drawing upon their previous research.
   The diversity of editors’ and contributors’ research interests influenced the volume’s rich
patchwork-style composition. This is a book one could approach slowly and return to re-
peatedly, and each time, like in a kaleidoscope, discover a different layout of meanings. As the
editors note in the Introduction, they have aimed for such richness and complexity, inviting
the authors to contribute to the collection “in the spirit of speculative inventiveness” (p. 4),
i.e., to reflect on elements in a free and open manner. The initial idea was not to build an
overarching theory of the elements, but instead to experiment and engage in an open, non-
restrictive conversation. As the volume demonstrates, elements appear in multiple forms: as
forces and energies, as chemical particles, as social forms, or as material objects. Most impor-
tantly, the contributors aim to analyze the elements in their relation to humans seeing them
“not as the nature which ‘humanity’ must struggle against or tame, but as ‘naturecultures’” (p.
6). The volume’s eleven chapters address such more-than-human naturecultural arrangements
from different angles, but all of them point out the distinction between elements and elemental.

 CNOSIEZA
        T . taI lian Journal of Science & eT chnology tudie
                                                          S s        © The Author(s) 2023
)14( p. 1953- ISN 2038-46                                            Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
         DOI: 10.692/isn/1794.2038-6                                 www.tecnoscienza.net
Varfolomeeva                                                                                      194

By accentuating this distinction, the authors demonstrate that elements are complex and fuzzy
phenomena tied up with multiple aspects of human life and provoking contradictory responses.
   In the introduction, the editors group the chapters into three sections: “Elements as rela-
tional substance”, “Actualities of the elemental”, and “Elemental practices”. Each of these
subsections, in my view, could potentially correspond with one concept from the title –
chemistry, ecology, or practice, all connected through the notion of reactivating. By reac-
tivating, the authors refer to “calling a recognized entity into a new situation; catalyzing new
models of thought and action” (p. 1).
   The first four chapters by Isabelle Stengers, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Stefan Helmreich, and
Joseph Dumit engage with elementary forms and anthropogenic chemicals entangled with
social life. In the opening chapter, Isabelle Stengers discusses one of the volume’s key terms,
“reactivation”, seeing it as addressing the elements’ “metamorphic character, both shaping
and being shaped by the particular ecology in which they participate” (p. 27). The following
three contributions discuss the reactivation of elements in relation to toxic regimes and re-
parative justice (Papadopoulos), thinking with water and waves as elementary forms of social
and elemental life (Helmreich), or bromine as an element animating new ways of talking
about and working with substances (Dumit).
   The next four chapters deal with elements in their actuality, i.e., as driving forces in world-mak-
ing. Astrid Schrader analyzes transformative agencies of marine viruses alternating between liv-
ing and non-living phases, as “elemental ghosts” (p. 109). Joseph Masco, exploring the history of
radioactive elements and plastic, provides a striking contrast between a world as neatly organized
and ordered by the Periodic table and its messy and complex actual arrangements. The chapter
of Patrick Bresnihan engages with the wind as a reactivation of the weather’s elemental forces, as
a contested resource, and as a potential ally in more-than-human engagements. To continue the
conversation on the actuality of elements, Cory Hayden examines crowds as elementary forms
of social life, asking what crowds are composed of and what makes them hold together.
   The final three chapters of the volume deal with various forms of elemental thinking in rela-
tion to power imbalances. These chapters pay special attention to alternative practices and meth-
ods of reactivating the elements and engaging them in more-than-human ecologies. The contri-
bution of Maria Puig de la Bellacasa focuses on the soil as a part of the biochemical processes of
breakdown and decreation, particularly emphasizing alternative stories of engaging with soil as
an element. Tim Choy discusses the agency of air in more-than-human engagements, provoca-
tively offering the readers to imagine a “conspiracy of breathers” (p. 249) as a political formation
potentially resisting the industrial urge to pollute. The final chapter by Michelle Murphy centers
on the industrial pollutants in Chemical Valley (Sarnia Lambton region in Canada), built on the
land stolen from Indigenous residents. Murphy defines governmental and industrial efforts to
erase or deny environmental violence as “infrastructures of gaslighting” (p. 265) embedded in
the colonial permission-to-pollute (p. 262) and neglecting alternative ecologies.
   The final chapters read with strong emotions and leave an aftertaste of the volume ending
too abruptly. A concluding intervention, once again bridging the diverse contributions and
discussing parallels and interrelations between them could have potentially helped readers to
navigate the complex structure of the book. Additionally, it would have been interesting to
learn more about the development of the collective thinking behind this volume. It has been
195                                                                        Tecnoscienza. 2023. 14(1)

mentioned in the volume that its idea originated from a panel at the European Association for
the Study of Science and Technology conference in 2016 (p. 14, p. 79). It would perhaps be use-
ful for the readers to see in more detail how the authors’ approach to elemental thinking and the
concept of reactivation changed as the panel discussions gradually turned into a co-edited book.
  Overall, this volume represents a solid contribution to STS and environmental humanities lit-
erature. It could be well situated in recent scholarly conversations on resources as parts of more-
than-human assemblages (e.g., Salazar et al. 2020; Watts 2019). It will be a relevant and exciting
read for scholars, students, and activists interested in more-than-human assemblages, power and
resistance, as well as alternative ways of engaging with nonhuman actors in a shared landscape.


References

de La Bellacasa, María Puig (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds, 41,
   University of Minnesota Press.
Myers, Natasha (2017) From the anthropocene to the planthroposcene: Designing gardens for plant/people
   involution, in “History and Anthropology”, 28(3), pp. 297-301.
Papadopoulos, Dimitris (2018) Experimental Practice: Technoscience, Alterontologies, and More-Than-
   Social Movements, Duke University Press.
Salazar, Juan Francisco, Granjou, Céline, Kearnes, Matthew, Krzywoszynska, Anna and Tironi, Manuel
   (eds.) (2020) Thinking with Soils: Material Politics and Social Theory, Bloomsbury Publishing.
Watts, Laura (2019) Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga, MIT Press.
