Anticipating and Deferring. Elements of a Politics of Suspension

The talk brings together two disparate and hitherto largely unconnected strands of research: the critical analysis of cryopreservation technologies – the storage of organic material at very low temperatures – and the debate on modes of anticipation. Focusing on the cryobanking of organic material from animal and plant species for biodiversity conservation, I argue that cryopreservation practices are part of contemporary technologies of anticipation. They are linked to a politics of suspension by mobilising a liminal biological state in which vital materials are neither fully alive nor ultimately dead.

The politics of suspension promises to keep future options open in order to address the existential threats of the present. Following this imagination, de-extinction scientists and biologists dream of restoring ancient ecosystems and resurrecting extinct species as a way of responding to the climate crisis. However, this politics of suspension may also contribute to tendencies to preserve the status quo by putting on hold the political and social transformations needed to respond effectively to the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.