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Worlds Beyond Bios

The Life of Matter and the Matter of Life

Cover of Worlds Beyond Bios features a photograph of a sandy beach with a city skyline stretched out in the distance. The foreground shows wet sand, footprints, and a large pile of organic material.

Book

Pages: 440

Illustrations: 25 illustrations

Release Date: August 25, 2026

Editors: Sophie Chao, Christine J. Winter, David Schlosberg

Contributors: Eunice Andrada, Karin Bolender, Judith Nangala Crispin, Elizabeth Duncan, Eickelkamp, Ute, Natasha Fijn, Erin Fitz-Henry, Gastón R. Gordillo, César Enrique Giraldo Herrera, Zsuzsanna Ihar, Giulia Lepori, Yasmine Musharbash, Astrida Neimanis, Craig Santos Perez, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Susan Reid, Jenny García Ruales, Makere Stewart-Harawira, Malini Sur, Blanche Verlie, Jamie Wang, Jelle J P Wouters, Faizah Zakaria

Worlds Beyond Bios builds on recent theoretical and ethnographic approaches to the more-than-human, exploring how entities not traditionally recognized as “alive” play active roles in shaping multispecies worlds. Drawing from Indigenous and Global South epistemologies as well as anthropology, the environmental humanities, and political theory, the contributors develop philosophies and practices of engagement with matter that are agentive and affective. Taken together, they offer ways of theorizing relations, justice, and materiality in an age of planetary unmaking and colonial capitalist logics, grounded in an ethics of responsibility and repair. From the political agency of mountains and the liveliness of sand to the spectral futures of coal and the opaque aesthetics of dust, Worlds Beyond Bios reveals how assumed borders between bios and non-bios are not only porous but politically consequential.

Praise

“This is a fantastic collection. Threaded throughout is the argument that, to perceive and do justice to climate and environmental catastrophe, we need to undo the normative binary of life and non-life. Hybridizing Indigenous and folkloric forms of knowledge with contemporary arts, science, and sustainability aspirations, the essays are haunting, inspiring, insightful, evocative, poetic, tragic, fierce, and grief stricken.” - Samantha Frost, author of Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney.

Christine J. Winter is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Otago.

David Schlosberg is Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of Helsinki.

Table Of Contents

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Foreword / Elizabeth Povinelli  ix
Thinking Beyond Bios in an Age of Planetary Undoing / Sophie Chao  1
Part I: Eco-Materialities
1. Chanting the Waters / Craig Santos Perez  27
2. The Power of Mountains / Gastón Gordillo  30
3. Sand as Subject of Multispecies Justice / Christine Winter  46
4. Toward a Geological Humanism? / Erin Fitz-Henry  59
5. Climatic Corporeality / Blanche Verlie  78
6. Five Eco-Material Connections / Natasha Fijn  98
Part II: Techn-Materialities
7. Kotu Batu / Eunice Andrada  121
8. Minding the Ropes / César Enrique Giraldo Herrera  122
9. Waste and the City / Elizabeth Duncan 131
10. What Matter Matters / David Schlosberg and Christine Winter  147
11. Water and Soil Relationality / Giulia Lepori  157
Part III. Cosmo-Materialities
12. Poem of the Dead Woman / Judith Nangala Crispin  173
13. Making Works with Mermaids / Jelle J. P. Wouters  176
14. Strange Lights, New Skies / Yasmine Musharbash / 197
15. Corazonando from the Amazon / Jenny García Ruales  209
16. Omenic Missiles, Cold War Specters / Zsuzsanna Ihar  235
Part IV: Material Afterlives
17. A Body Emptied—Full / Jamie Wang  255
18. Ways to Love Sludge / Faizah Zakaria  261
19. Multibeing Drag Rift / Susan Reid and Astrida Neimanis  280
20. Frontiers of Dust / Malini Sur  288
21. Pulp Frictions / Karin Bolender  299
22. After Coal / Ute Eickelkamp  315
23. Spent Earth / Sophie Chao  340
Afterword / Makere Stewart-Harawira  351
Acknowledgments  355
Bibliography  357
Contributors  405
Index  411

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3887-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3399-8 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6249-3 /