crablike conversation

is a conversation between oneself and the people of whom we write. These modes of engagement take on other spatiotemporal or faunal formations, like the radiality of, say, starfish or sand dollars.

Lest this way of putting things suggest a flat aesthetic in which the anthropologist now represents marine biologist representing the sea, let me say that I am in search of what Latour calls more 'indirect, crosswise, and crablike'67 conversation between myself and the people of whom I write-what anthropologist Bill Maurer has named a lateral mode of engagement, where threads of connection between the lives of scientist and of anthropologist get tied in knots, do not exist solely in parallel or linear reflection but take on 'other spatiotemporal or faunal formations, like the radiality of, say, starfish or sand dollars.'68 (Bill Maurer in Helmreich Alien Ocean. 22)

crablike conversation, n.All

crablike conversation