Anabiosis and the Liminal Geographies of De/extinction

Abstract

The spectacle of de-extinction is often forward facing at the interface of science fiction and speculative fact, haunted by extinction’s pasts. Missing from this discourse, however, is a robust theorization of de-extinction in the present. This article presents recent developments in the emergent fields of resurrection biology and liminality to conceptualize the anabiotic (not living nor dead) state of de/extinction. Through two stories, this article explores the epistemological perturbation caused by the suspended animation of genetic material. Contrasting the genomic stories of the bucardo, a now extinct subspecies of Iberian ibex whose genome was preserved before the turn of the millennium, and the woolly mammoth, whose genome is still a work in progress, the author poses questions concerning the existential authenticity of this genomic anabiosis. They serve as archetypal illustrations of salvaged and synthesized anabiotic creatures. De/extinction is presented as a liminal state of being, both living and dead, both fact and fiction, a realm that we have growing access to through the proliferation of synthetic biology and cryopreservation. The article concludes through a presentation of anabiotic geographies, postulating on the changing biocultural significances we attach to organisms both extinct and extant, and considering their implications for the contemporary extinction crisis.

Spectral ecologies: De/extinction in the Pyrenees

“…Cloning scientists claimed that their overall objective was the repopulation of the Pyrenees 1 . It was the first and only “de‐extinction” project to utilise interspecific nuclear transfer cloning as a method (Adams, 2017; Novak, 2018; Sandler, 2017; Searle, 2020; Sherkow & Greely, 2013). These scientists believed cloning to be the only means of filling the ecological absence left in the wake of the bucardo’s extinction ( Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica ).…”

“…These techniques rely on the creation of organisms that resemble extinct biota; whether these animals are authentic proxies for absent ecologies is a matter of intense philosophical and scientific debate (Campbell, 2017; Novak, 2018; Siipi, 2014; Siipi & Finkelman, 2017). Rather, considering more‐than‐human agencies as challenges to the firm binary between extinct and extant sheds light on the liminal space between the binary: “de/extinction” (Searle, 2020). In the next section, I attend to the ontological and epistemological implications of de/extinction in the broad sense.…”

“…McCorristine and Adams illustrate that not only do hauntings of past extinctions have palpable and material consequences for the practices of conservation, they also present de‐extinction as a “critical context for further debates about how absence and presence perform work in conservation and how cultural geographers might deal with the language and practice of ’bringing back the dead’ in a more‐than‐human world” (2020, p. 111). Recently, more‐than‐human spectrality has garnered considerable attention in the cultural geographies of biotic loss and recovery (Bastian, 2020; Bersaglio & Margulies, 2021; Fredriksen, 2021; Garlick, 2019; Jørgensen, 2016; Lorimer, 2020; Searle, 2020, 2021; Symons & Garlick, 2020; Toso et al, 2020; Wrigley, 2020). For Ben Garlick and Kate Symons, “geographies after extinction are haunted geographies” (2020, p. 132) that provoke new affective activities, relations, and attachments (Garlick, 2019).…”

“…Recovering lost biota is an emotional process involving mourning and hope, and various approaches to ecological restoration can be considered material engagements with this process (Cunsolo & Landman, 2017; van Dooren & Rose, 2017; Heise, 2016; Jørgensen, 2019; McCorristine & Adams, 2020; Searle, 2020). Intermediations in loss and recovery occupy uncanny temporalities; references to the past through intervention for the future – hauntings.…”

“…But we had to trap her to preserve her genome.” The last bucardo – Celia – was successfully trapped on 20 April 1999, tranquillised, and her genetic material cryogenically preserved. When Celia died in Ordesa, the bucardo became the first extinct taxon to be outlived by their own intact cells (Searle, 2020). Such achronological injunctions – departures from the linearities of evolutionary time – are likely to become more commonplace with the onset of speculative cryo‐conservation (Chrulew, 2017; Keck, 2017; Ryder et al, 2020; Wrigley, in press).…”