The Cold Matterphor as a Necrocene Marker: A Biologist's Cartography of the Diminished Material Eventfulness

The Necrocene, a pathological anthropogenic impact on the biosphere, operates on the logistics of capitalism. It commodifies science, embedding the ecocentric biologist within ecocidal and speciesist practices. To chart the signs of necrosis, the cold matterphor (material metaphor) is forged—a marker of diminished material eventfulness (capacity to affect). Intersecting empirical, phenomenological, and aesthetic evidence, these matterphors reveal an ontological resonance between coldness and affective stasis. The inquiry culminates in a transmutation of laboratory into creative praxis, whereby the prose poem functions as a machine for desubjectification, using the Necrocene's cold matterphor against itself. As a method to apprehend the ahuman register, desubjectification cools down the Self to warm up the Other, seeking reconciliation with the inevitable finitude of anthropos, both individual and taxonomic. This cross-fertilisation between posthumanism, material ecocriticism, and artistic inquiry spawns an insider's critique of anthropocentric biological research, suggesting applications across natureculture fields, from bioethics to astrobiology.