Life in suspension

Abstract

Inspired by ethnographic work with professional scuba divers, whose skills and technology are relevant to how astronauts train on earth and survive in outer space, this article theorizes about what it means for humans to live in suspension. I argue that scientific encounters with extra-terrestrial environments are marked by the co-existence of surface and suspension tropes that speak of contrasting ways of embodying and conceiving extreme life. The contrast between surface and suspension tropes resonates profoundly with, I suggest, some of the challenges that extremophiles – organism that thrive in extreme environments – present for Neo- Darwinian views on evolution. I conclude by stressing the entangled relat ionship between feeling and thinking that exists in the conceptualisation of environmental relations.