Aktuelles
Vortrag Lemke Dienstag, 25. Januar 2022, 19.15 Uhr Online
Latency and Liminality: Investigating Suspended Life in Cryopreservation Practices
Prof. Dr. Thomas Lemke, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. (ein Abstract folgt noch).
Thema: ZTF - Vortrag Thomas Lemke
Zoom-Meeting beitreten
https://ovgu.zoom.us/j/63795413287
Meeting-ID: 637 9541 3287
Kenncode: Crypto
Abstract
The talk focusses on the ability of some animals and plants to respond to changing environmental conditions by temporarily suspending metabolic processes. Showing no visible sign of life, these organisms appear to be dead but can return to vital activity once a more favourable environmental constellation arises. In contemporary biology, this liminal state between life and death is commonly labelled “cryptobiosis”, combining the Greek kryptos (hidden, concealed, secret) with biōsis (mode of life).
I argue that the notion “cryptobiosis” does not account sufficiently for the processual and relational dimensions of ametabolic life and propose a new concept, “limbiosis”, which connects the Latin word limen (threshold, doorstep) with the Greek notion of biōsis. While cryptobiosis still nurtures the imaginary of some latent life waiting to become active again, limbiosis stresses the liminality of the neither-nor or in-between life and death. The notion also grasps the dynamic and ongoing transfer between the biological and the technological, the natural and the artificial. As I will show, the conceptual frame of limbiosis offers new theoretical, methodological and empirical avenues for analysing “suspended life”.