Slime

Slime has always stirred the imagination and evoked strong responses. It is as central to life and growth as to death, degeneration, and rot. Slime heals and cures; it also infects and kills. Slime titillates and terrifies. It fascinates children and is the horror in our stories and the disgusting in our fridges. Slime is part of good sex. Slime is also worryingly on the rise in our warming oceans. Engaging with slime is becoming more urgent because of its proliferation both in the seas and in our imaginations. Inextricable from racism, homophobia, sexism, and ecophobia, slime is our least theorized element and is indeed traditionally not even included among the elements. Things need to change. Addressing our growing climate issues and honestly confronting matters associated with them depend to a very large degree on theorizing and thus understanding how we have thought and continue to think about slime.