João Biehl publishes new book, Arc of Interference: Medical Anthropology for Worlds on Edge

Edited by João Biehl and Vincanne Adams, the radically humanistic essays of Arc of Interference (Duke U Press) refigure our sense of the real, the ethical, and the political in the face of mounting social and planetary upheavals.

“This is a book about life and death and about the aftermath of death. That alone makes it relevant to our species and to others, but Arc of Interference is also a book about the possibility of something more and something wonderful: across the continents, people struggle to care for one another.” — Paul Farmer, from the Foreword

Eschewing hegemonic modes of intervention, the essays in Arc of Interference advance the notion of a care-ful ethnographic praxis of interference. To interfere is to dislodge ideals of naturalness, blast enduring binaries (human-nonhuman, self-other, us-them), and redirect technocratic agendas while summoning relational knowledge and the will to create community. The book’s multiple ethnographic arcs of interference provide a vital conceptual toolkit for today’s world and a badly needed moral perch to peer toward just horizons.

Join a discussion of Arc of Interference with João Biehl, Laurence Ralph, and Adriana Petryna at Labyrinth Books on Tuesday, May 2, at 6:00 pm.