A new Special Issue of BioSocieties extends the current work on cryopolitics by analyzing cryoconservation practices as part of a broader “politics of suspension” and can be accessed on SpringerNature now!

This special issue of BioSocieties engages more closely with the political issues at stake when life is suspended in ice. Rather than focusing on latency and potential, however, the contributions analyse cryopractices as part of a “politics of suspension” that “both reserves time to keep options open and conceives of cryopreserved organic material a as standing reserve”.

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Special Issue Articles

Braun, Veit, Lafuente-Funes, Sara, Lemke, Thomas & Liburkina, Ruzana (2024). Introduction to the special issue: Politics of suspension? Time, space, and control in cryopreservation practices. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00343-0

Lemke, Thomas (2024). Anticipating and suspending: the chronopolitics of cryoconservation. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00332-3

Wolff, Leon (2024). Suspending Life, controlling change: cryotechnology, genetic identity, and ecological separation. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00336-z

Liburkina, Ruzana (2024). The politics of suspension suspended: the curious case of a cryopreserved cell product. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00328-z

Lafuente-Funes, Sara (2024). “Being useful, I think it’s the result of a sick society”: Critical reflections on reproductive politics and markets by women freezing their eggs in Spain. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-023-00321-y ↗

Landecker, Hannah (2024). Cell freezing and the inexorability: on cryoprotectants and chemical time. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00331-4

Hoeyer, Klaus (2024). Afterword: the politics of suspension as an analytical gestalt switch. BioSocieties 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00342-1