Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice

“Emergent Forms of Life is a sprawling, encyclopedic work that attests to Michael Fischer’s impressive erudition, his openness to new modes of thought, his enthusiastic commitment to a critical sociology….” - Vincent Crapanzo, Anthropos

“By positioning contemporary ethnographic work as being in dialogue with the people, politics, and knowledge formations anthropologists both study and live by, Emergent Forms shows how ethics forms a vital domain of anthropological inquiry today.” - Adriana Petryna, American Ethnologist

"[Michael M. J. Fischer] is one of America's most prominent anthropological theorists. . . . [T]his is an optimistic and hopeful book which I think does honor to the anthropological enterprise. . . ." - David Napier, Anthropological Quarterly

"Michael M. J. Fischer's collection of essays exuberantly cuts a wide swath through a vast and labyrinthine literature on cinema, pedagogy, autobiography, computers, molecular biology, museum studies, wood block prints, the AIDS epidemic, and much more. . . Fischer has been navigating adroitly with great force and urgency through a whole set of interlocking discourses and practices; the interest and passion that he brings to his very eclectic approach is tangible. . . The journey is an exhilarating one, and from the outside one must wonder how it worked out. Clearly not everything or everybody was aboard and, the connections made were undoubtedly often no more than partial. The nitty-gritty of the academic politics is glided over in the whirl of metaphoric tripping from topic to topic, field to field, genre to genre, science to science, text to text, image to image, and all the possible combinations one can imagine that hold between and amongst them. Whatever happened at MIT there is much to learn from, and to savor, in Fischer's contributions to that extended moment." - Paul Rabinow, American Anthropologist

“Michael M. J. Fischer’s ‘anthropology outside the frame’ takes on an astounding range of contemporary subjects: Austrian politics, Polish and Iranian films, cyberspace, virtual surgery, xenotransplantation, the autobiographical construction of memory, the technoscientific representation of the social world, and the ethical complexities of fieldwork among tribal peoples. His extension of ethnography beyond its traditional concerns to the investigation of the emerging forms of human consciousness usually vaguely grouped as ‘late-’ or ‘postmodern’ sets out a broad new agenda for cultural description and political critique. An unstandard, adventurous, eye-opening work.” - Clifford Geertz

“True to its title, Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice is about worlds coming into being in technoculture. Attentive especially to the new biologies and biotechnologies, information technologies, and ecological and environmental matters, Michael M. J. Fischer explores what he calls ‘ethical plateaus’ or domains of ethical challenge. This wonderful book neither condemns nor glorifies emergent worlds; instead it gives us deep and intelligent analysis and reflection from a distinctive ethnographic point of view. ‘Culture’ comes alive here. As Fischer reminds us vividly, culture is not a variable. Culture is about relationships, about relating as a verb. Culture is a passage and a topos, and Fischer is a masterful guide.” - Donna Haraway