Synthetic Becoming

The collective monograph Synthetic Becoming brings together research by artists, activists, and feminist technoscience practitioners concerned with sympoietic becoming with hormones and hormonally-active chemicals. The contributors examine effects of industrial, pharmaceutical, and more-than-human production and interplay of hormonally active molecules, asking: What does life re-assembled by hormones and hormone-mimicking chemicals look and feel like? Who are we becoming with them and how can we possibly be with them otherwise? Adopting a decolonial feminist, posthumanist, and new materialist approach, the book embraces queer ecological sensibilities and responds with a series of critical but hopeful provocations that embrace posthuman mutability and articulate our “synthetic becoming” in ways that facilitate caring relations and allow us to envision and enact hopeful futures with and despite these peculiar chemical agents.

Synthetic Becoming. Edited by Lenka Veselá, with Malin Ah-King and Eva Hayward; Aliens in Green (Léonore Bonaccini, Ewen Chardronnet, Xavier Fourt, Špela Petrič, Mary Tsang); Adham Faramawy; Feminist Technoscience Governance Collaboratory (Jacquelyne Luce with Vrisha Ahmad, April Albrecht, Sarah Hyde, Amanda Kearney, Lainie LaRonde, Alek Meyer, Cassie Pawlikowski, Karisa Poedjirahardjo, Emily Pollack, Anjali Rao-Herel, and Ella Sevier); Annabel Guérédrat, Rian Ciela Hammond and Krystal Tsosie; Franziska Klaas and Susanne Bauer; Marne Lucas; Mary Maggic; OBOT (Maddalena Fragnito and Zoe Romano); Byron Rich; Mariana Rios Sandoval and the Rosæ Canine Collective (Bethsabée Elharar-Lemberg, Maïwenn Le Roux, Elena Souvannavong); Lenka Veselá; and, Ker Wallwork. Design by Day Shift Office (Bára Růžičková & Terezie Štindlová).