A provocative historical inquiry into human becoming, this book consists of a set of idiosyncratic essays on embryology and infancy, play and games, manners, meals, and other messes. Inspecting a wide range of textual, visual, and artefactual evidence in and beyond medieval England, Mitchell argues that humanity issued from a dense material matrix that is barely human. Congeries of animate and inanimate objects expose the extent to which the human learned to dwell among a welter of things. Becoming (ontogeny) turns out to be a better category than being (ontology) for capturing the conjugated ... More

A provocative historical inquiry into human becoming, this book consists of a set of idiosyncratic essays on embryology and infancy, play and games, manners, meals, and other messes. Inspecting a wide range of textual, visual, and artefactual evidence in and beyond medieval England, Mitchell argues that humanity issued from a dense material matrix that is barely human. Congeries of animate and inanimate objects expose the extent to which the human learned to dwell among a welter of things. Becoming (ontogeny) turns out to be a better category than being (ontology) for capturing the conjugated modes of existence required for sustaining life at various scales. While Mitchell makes important contributions to medieval scholarship on the body, sexuality, family, medicine, and material culture, his work is also in dialogue with recent developments in the posthumanities. The book theorizes what can be called a medieval ecological imaginary, offering a longer historical perspective on the fate of the human than is usually found in modern discussions. Mitchell returns to early understandings of epigenesis, virtuality, natality, chaos, animation, and cosmogony to trace the inheritance of modern speculative and scientific notions usually considered in isolation from the past. He explores a broad array of phenomenal objects, and in the process rediscovers and reanimates distinctly medieval ontologies. In addressing the emergency of the human in the later Middle Ages, Mitchell identifies ideas of becoming in the past where humanity is and remains at risk.