Seite - 23 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

separated and we are still haunted by the ghosts of natureculture.1 The aggregation of microplastics in the ocean and the emergence of new hybrid lifeforms on synthetic surfaces can serve as a reflection for human entanglements with plastic, the embeddedness of the synthetic polymers in human environments, infrastructures and even bodies. In the words of Timothy Morton: “we ourselves are implicated” (Morton 2007, 187). What concepts in feminist technosci- ence, political ecology, multispecies ethnography and queer ecologies help to tackle these kinds of socio-environmental phenomena? But also, what are the constraints and limits of a natureculture perspective that deals with entanglements and the ghosts of permanent ambiva- lence? Because of its circumventing, evading and erratic character, plastic calls into question notions of pure nature, of authenticity or virginity, even of reproductivity, queering nature (Davis 2015). In recent years, the notion of entanglement in the works of Karen Barad (Barad 2007) and others (Myers 2012; Taffel and Holm 2016; Tosoni and Pinch 2016) were in vogue to describe hybrid encounters in naturecultures – but can it really capture all of the dynamics of this emerging phenomenon? Most entanglements can be disentangled: Think of Haraway’s steady use of textile metaphors from quilts to string figures (Haraway 2016). A turtle that becomes entangled in a six-pack-ring might die. Though, there is the hypothetical option to help the animal escape its plastic trap. But what if the amalgamation of synthetic materials in the environment goes even further? When the aggregation of plastics and entities in seawater like plankton (Long et al. 2017) becomes much more “melded”, using ideas of purification or separation is impossible. Here the notion of “slime” (Helmreich 2009, 129–30; Schrader 2012) might be interesting to work with. Unlike entanglements, slime does much more to address the uneasiness and uncanniness of the phenomenon. The anticipation of the uncanny is informed by other ghosts of the 20th century, such as radioactive contamination that challenge thinking in relatively “straight” temporalities. In the marine plastisphere or in atmospheric emissions we are seeing the emergence of unformed objects whose long-term effects and risks are hard to evaluate. In an essay in Cultural Anthropology from 2013, Michelle Murphy contemplated about the new status of these unformed objects and about their undecidable effects, in her words: “of becomings that are never fully finished, of conflicted materializations always in a state of uneasy entanglement, or queer objects that defy attempts to pin them down […] But where early technoscience studies was often always-more-of-the-same narratives, the stories of unformed objects tend to be heterogeneous, open-ended, and a challenge to convey in linear writing“ (Murphy 2013). The contemporary world appears increasingly threatened by its own waste, by what has been forgotten but not gone. Thus, the historiography of the material cultures of plastics can lead to new insights concerning their contingent economies and also its underlying promissory capital (Hawkins 2013; Westermann 2007). On the other hand, emerging alternatives to prevent waste or the Zero Waste movement bring to mind ghosts of an often unreal and idealized past, and a version of purified nature.2 In addition, environmentalism in the North has adopted often a quite 1 Subramaniam shows for example how ecological discourses about invasive species often follow the same argumentative patterns like the discourse about human migration. 2 For example, some bulk food stores [Unverpackt-Läden] rely heavily on a romantic view of a “better” past without plastic packaging, on the ideas of homeland (Heimat), hominess and the desire for an idealized version of nature. 23