Abstract

In an attempt to comprehend the intersection between the short and accelerated human history with the deep and slow history of the planet, this essay imaginatively follows the temporal and spatial movement of a lithium atom. The article focuses on the extractive enterprise deployed by SQM, a transnational mining company operating in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. Proposing a fictional ethnography methodology, the paper historicizes lithium extraction and its political implications, from its extraction from Chilean subsoils to its assemblage into an iPhone cellphone battery in one of Apple’s manufacturing bases in China and later commercialization in the USA and Chile, where the lithium atom originated. The article highlights lithium extraction’s different scales and geopolitics to reflect on how transnational technology companies design the global world based on economic gains while destroying vital spaces where human and nonhuman beings have lived together for centuries.