| Abstrakt: |
This collection of articles describes how cryopreservation enables particular imaginaries about 'suspending time' thereby creating what Lemke terms "a principle of whenever." These imaginaries come to shape both intimate personal choices relating to fertility, organizational and commercial investments, research and regulatory investments in equipment and risk assessments, as well as major societal prioritizations of ecological conservation. Taken together, these articles thus unfold how mundane freezing technologies interact with profound societal changes and impact everyday lives. The politics of suspension almost seems to circumvent the political or substitute the political with 'cooling,' and yet these articles illustrate how these dynamics do not erase politics, but call for new analytical awareness to identify the political stakes. Taken collectively, the articles also illustrate inspiring approaches to three productive tensions running through much scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS)—tensions between technological and social determinism; technology optimism and pessimism; and between a focus on micro- and macro-practices. In doing so, the articles can be said in various ways to do the important work of a gestalt switch: shifting our attention from the well-known politics in the foreground to the tacit politics in the background. With this commentary, I suggest that the dynamics they explore can be productively viewed as instances of the 'infrastructuring' of the futures available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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