Unfinished

The Anthropology of Becoming

Editors | João Biehl & Peter Locke

Contributors | Lucas Bessire, João Biehl, Naisargi N. Dave, Elizabeth Anne Davis, Michael M. J. Fischer, Angela Garcia, Peter Locke, Adriana Petryna, Bridget Purcell, Laurence Ralph, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz

About the Book | This original, field-changing collection explores the plasticity and unfinishedness of human subjects and lifeworlds, advancing the conceptual terrain of an anthropology of becoming. People’s becomings trouble and exceed ways of knowing and acting, producing new possibilities for research, methodology, and writing. The contributors creatively bridge ethnography and critical theory in a range of worlds on the edge, from war and its aftermath, economic transformation, racial inequality, and gun violence to religiosity, therapeutic markets, animal rights activism, and abrupt environmental change. Defying totalizing analytical schemes, these visionary essays articulate a human science of the uncertain and unknown and restore a sense of movement and possibility to ethics and political practice. Unfinished invites readers to consider the array of affects, ideas, forces, and objects that shape contemporary modes of existence and future horizons, opening new channels for critical thought and creative expression.

Reviews

“As prismatic points arrayed around questions of theory and method, these exceptional essays provide very precise contexts in which modes of thought and being and problematics of futures literally take shape. They pull into line with their subjects, moving sideways to follow them, getting out of their way, listening, noticing. Each ending up with a striking image. Making powerful interventions into basic problematics of anthropological subjects and objects, Unfinished is a major contribution to cultural theory.” — Kathleen Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects

“A rich, timely, and important work, Unfinished articulates the philosophical terms of an approach to anthropology that attends to becoming and generativity in life in a number of ethnographic contexts. By creatively exploring and employing the formation of Gilles Deleuze’s ideas, Unfinishedoffers an integrative relation between philosophical theory and anthropological thought in superbly original and lasting ways.” — Robert Desjarlais, author of Subject to Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist World

Read Excerpts

Foreword. Unfinished 
Introduction. Ethnographic Sensorium 

Duke University Press, 2017