Unfinished is a field-changing collection edited by Joao Biehl, which explores the plasticity of human subjects and lifeworlds, advancing the conceptual terrain of an anthropology of becoming. We invite you to a presentation and discussion.

People's becomings trouble and exceed ways of knowing and acting, producing new possibilities for research, methodology, and writing. The contributors to this volume 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.
 

João Biehl is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and the author of Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment and Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival. Arcadio Diaz-Quinones is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. His publications include El almuerzo en la hierbal; La memoria rota: ensayos de cultura y politica;and Sobre los principios: los intelectuales caribeños y la tradición. Adriana Petryna is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl; Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices; and When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects.

This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Anthropology Department and is part of the Princeton Migrations Series. For more information and a listing of all events in this series, please visit princetonmigrations.org