DIAPHANES No. 4: Merry Xenotism!

<p>Was there ever anything inherent? Or wasn’t there always something different—appropriated? The narratives of identity: exhausted among undead restoration and the fragmented dis­ courses of equality. Every self­-image forecasts<br /> its own disappearance. The longer you look at it, the more alien its returning stare. Even a square centimeter of mucous membrane or the thin­ nest of biofilms reveal the body as a transitory space, the individual as a colony: I am I and all my microorganisms—and those of my ancestors and their genotypes formed through ages of adapta­tion. Mutation and migration—from micro­ to socio­biome: we are we and all our languages, ideas, and cultures, together with their epidemic religious and knowledge wars.</p> <p>Merry Xenotism! This edition sings the praises of diversity, of cheerful border traffic, of the vital contagiousness of the alien: Yves Netzhammer projects a digital agglomeration; Lynn Hershman Leeson signs her antibody. Parzival’ has no identity, but a mission. What or who is Zah Zuh, and where is the next bit? Angelika Meier explains who the author really is, A.K. Kaiza what Wakanda would be if it existed. Slavs and Tatars call for repetition and temporal amalgamation, Zoran Terzićfor political transplantations. And will Swiss beeches soon need homeland security against xenophytic oaks?</p> <p>Becoming porous, improper, contagious, learning how not to understand: Merry Xenotism! <em>Inukeni wageni, tieni jitihada ya mwisho iwapo mnanuia tuwe sawa</em> — One more effort, fellow aliens, if we would become equals!</p>