8. Lithium

The chemical element lithium and its molecules are the protagonists of numerous stories. In this chapter, I want to tell one: the story of lithium’s discovery and ongoing use as a psychopharmacological substance. This story is perhaps not the most obvious one to tell in a book like this; today, lithium is probably best known as a key constituent of the batteries that power our mobile media devices, whose ubiquity has driven new, often violent, forms of extraction in countries like Bolivia. The story I want to tell unfolds in a different register and on a different scale. It begins with bodies.