Porous Becomings: New Book co-edited by Daniel M Knight

The Department is pleased to announce a new book publication, Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres, edited by Daniel Knight and Andreas Bandak (Copenhagen), recently released by Duke University Press.

The book features contributions from Jane Bennett, Tom Boylston, Steven Brown, Matei Candea, Alberto Corsin-Jimenez, David Henig, Michael Jackson, Celia Lowe, Morten Nielsen, Stavroula Pipyrou, Elizabeth Povinelli, Andrew Shryock and Arpad Szakolczai. Topics range from hospitality and parasitism, to time, pollution, humour, angels, ecologies of war, and transhumanism.

30% discount codes are E24BNDAK (Duke website) and FFS24 (Combined Academic Publishers website). Further details on the book below:

One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres' interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of 'porosity' to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.