Metabolic Strata, Corporeal Sediment

Abstract

This article explores the uneven geosocial traces created by transcontinental and corporeal circulations of tin ore, metallic tin, and tin cans from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Although tin has no essential relationship to human life, I argue that the extraction, circulation, and consumption of tin have nevertheless contributed to the production of metabolic unevenness across continental space. Since the early industrial era, tin has been used primarily for food preservation, in which capacity it has nutritionally supported the metabolic processes (and labor power) of workers, settlers, and soldiers, among others. Tin canning technologies relied, in turn, on the relentless labor of tin miners, whose own metabolic processes were interrupted by the accumulation of mineral dust in their lungs. These histories have been archived as geosocial strata as both discarded tin cans and pulmonary fibrosis. Drawing insights from geophilosophy and both Marxian and toxicological approaches to metabolism, this article reflects on how inhuman forces and substances subtend not only life but also its disparate energies and exposures.