none 10.21983/P3.0292.1.00 punctum books punctum books 31179 175603334 3837471 20260701100925 10.21983 2026-07-01T12:13:14Z 2025-04-25T04:57:30Z 1 Freddie Mason Slime, Stickiness, Fondling, Mixtures Slime, goo, gunge, gloop, gels, sols, globules, jellies, emulsions, greases, soaps, syrups, glues, lubricants, liquid crystals, moulds, plasmas, and protoplasms – the viscous is not one thing, but rather a quality of resistance and flow, of stickiness and slipperiness. It is a state of matter that oozes into the gaps of our everyday existence, across age groups, between cultures and disciplines. Since the large-scale extraction of petroleum in the 19th century, the viscous has witnessed a proliferation in the variety of its forms. Mechanized industry required lubricants and oil distillation produced waste products that were refined to form Vaseline. From this age, new viscous forms and technologies emerged: products from plastic (and plastic explosives) to cosmetics, glycerine, asphalt, sexual lubrication, hydro- and aero-gels, and even anti-climb paint. Based on unique and wide-ranging research, The Viscous is the first major investigation of encounters with and possibilities of the viscous over the course of the last century, not simply as a material state, but also as an imaginative event. We enter into a story of matter at its most wayward, deviant, hesitant, and resistant. From asphalt lakes to industrial molasses tanks, from liquid crystals squirming in our screens to milk fetishes, The Viscous discloses gooeyness as a peculiarly modern phase of matter. “Everything oozes,” as Beckett’s Estragon famously proclaims in Waiting for Godot . Viscous dynamics are exposed as not only hugely various in a post-industrial age, but particularly useful ways of thinking, feeling, writing, and making in a time of ecological anxiety. 1 05 21 2020 978-1-950192-86-1 978-1-950192-87-8 punctum books Earth, Milky Way https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ 10.21983/P3.0292.1.00 https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-viscous-slime-stickiness-fondling-mixtures/ https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0292.1.00.pdf https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0292.1.00.pdf https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0292.1.00.pdf https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0292.1.00.pdf https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0292.1.00.pdf https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.21983/P3.0292.1.00.pdf 10.1093/mnras/sty1582 10.7717/peerj.851 10.1038/srep30371 10.1086/449030 10.2307/778354 10.1093/mnras/ 10.2307/3684882 10.1353/dia.0.0038 10.2307/311053 10.1080/00043249.2003.10792168 10.1086/660912 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.018101 10.1016/j.biosystems.2011.05.001 10.1353/pbm.2013.0022 10.1073/pnas.1215037109 10.1103/RevModPhys.89.031001