Underground Roots for Ancestral Futures: Exploring Lithium Through an Experimental Alliance between Chemistry and Anthropology

Abstract

Amid the push for decarbonization and the rise of lithium-ion batteries, global demand for lithium urges an examination of its materiality. Drawing on Barry's chemical geography, which gathers various concerns related to the study of chemicals in the field, and Bachelard's meta-chemical proposal, which challenges a substantialist understanding of chemicals, we propose an experimental alliance between a chemist and an anthropologist concerned with different ways of problematizing lithium's materiality. Guided by a commitment to Latin American territories and embracing a slow science ethos, we seek to foster a sense of responsibility rooted in the material genealogy of chemical substances. Through ethnographic analysis of lithium extraction practices in the Salar de Atacama, Chile, and examination of lithium behaviors in materials chemistry laboratories in Argentina and Europe, we establish a partial connection between lithium chemical labs and underground ancestral lithium brines. Ultimately, we envision futures that acknowledge the ancestral origins of Latin American undergrounds, resisting the univocity of a future-oriented, battery-ion age. In so doing, we endeavor to cultivate a mode of attention concerned with place and deep-time materiality, challenging lineal illusions of progress while embracing the complexities of our planetary present and past.