Slime dynamics: generation, mutation, and the creep of life

Despite humanity s gradual ascent from clustered pools of it, slime is more often than not relegated
to a mere residue—the trail of a verminous life form, the trace of decomposition, or an entertaining
synthetic material—thereby leaving its generative and mutative associations with life neatly removed
from the human sphere of thought and existence. Arguing that slime is a viable physical and metaphysical
object necessary to produce a realist bio-philosophy void of anthrocentricity, this text explores
naturephilosophie, speculative realism, and contemporary science; hyperbolic representations of slime
found in the weird texts of HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti; as well as survival horror films, video
games, and graphic novels, in order to present the dynamics of slime not only as the trace of life
but as the darkly vitalistic substance of life.
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