White Coat & Blackened Praxis: Death Activism of a Biologist

Strahinja Đurić has published a preprint of a new autoethnographic paper, "White Coat and Blackened Praxis: Death Activism of a Biologist", which introduces and defines the original theoretical concept of cold matterphor as a material metaphor that charts the resonance of coldness across ontological strata. It operates as a reducer of the potential for eventfulness, describing a state where matter's capacity to affect is diminished, unlike its capacity to be affected. This concept is developed by Strahinja Đurić as a central tool of melancology (Wilson), a critical framework intersecting black metal theory and ecology. Using a hybrid epistemology, the paper applies the cold matterphor to analyse the shared affective states between laboratory praxis and the aesthetics of black metal. Ultimately, the work frames this creative-critical praxis as an act of death activism (MacCormack), forging a novel link between death studies, material ecocriticism, and ahumanism. The pre-print is made publicly available to establish public and intellectual priority over the original theoretical framework developed within.