Porous Becomings

Andreas Bandak is Associate Professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen and author of Exemplary Life: Modelling Sainthood in Christian Syria.Daniel M. Knight is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of St. Andrews and author of Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen.

• Preface / Andreas Bandak and Daniel M. Knight  ixAcknowledgments  xiiiAngel Hair Anthropology with Michel Serres / Andreas Bandak and Daniel M. Knight  1Part I. Of Parasites and Contracts1. Three Tales on the Arts of Entrapment: Natural Contracts, Melodic Contaminations, and Spiderweb Anthropologies / Alberto CorsÍn JimÉnez  332. Under the Sign of Hermes: Transgression, the Trickster, and Natural Justice / Michael Jackson  493. Keeping to Oneself: Hospitality and the Magical Hoard in the Balga of Jordan / Andrew Shryock  69Chapter 3 Postscript: Connective Tissue / Andrew Shryock  914. Serres, the Sea, the Human, and Anthropology / Celia Lowe  99Part II. Bodies in Time5. Variations of Bodies in Motion and Relation / Elizabeth A. Povinelli  1176. When War Percolates: On Topologies of Earthly Violence in a Planetary Age / David Henig  1357. Feeling Safe in a Panbiotic World / Steven D. Brown  1538. Michel Serres and Gregory Bateson: Implicit Dialogue about a Recognitive Epistemology of Nature / Arpad Szakolczai  175Part III. Knowledge Quests9. Angelology / Tom Boylston  19910. Forms of Proximity / Stavroula Pipyrou  21511. Comedic Transubstantiation: The Hermesian Paradox of Being Funny among Stand-Up Comics in New York City / Morten Nielsen  23312. Michel Serres, Wisdom, Anthropology / Matei Candea  253Afterword: Conversations with Jane Bennett / Jane Bennett, Andreas Bandak, and Daniel M. Knight  273References  289Contributors  311Index  315

“This book will send many readers in search of what Michel Serres’s work might illuminate in the present condition of the world. The authors unravel some of anthropology’s conceptual straightjackets, thereby suggesting the discipline’s potential for rethinking the Anthropocene. Serres, they hint, saves the baby of an adventurous humanism while draining away the politically dirtied bathwater of disciplinary intolerance.” - Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University “Porous Becomings teems with immersive connectivity, opening new registers of sensemaking, flourishing, potentiality, and flux. This urgent and extraordinary collection traverses strata of existence that far exceed the human, yet slows the trip to inspire vital anthropological imaginations for our troubled times.” - Adriana Petryna, author of (Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change) "In Porous Becomings, a stellar roster of anthropologists takes up the thought of philosopher Michel Serres. . . . this well-timed contribution from anthropology is clearly a labor of love. . . . It invites us to dive in and explore connections across its lively chapters, following the whorls and eddies of Serres’s thought becoming anthropological. The portal is open." - Michael Degani (American Anthropologist)