Was there ever anything inherent? Or wasn’t there always something different—­appropriated? The narratives of identity: exhausted among ­undead restoration and the fragmented discourses of equality. Every self-image forecasts its own ­disappearance. The longer you look at it, the more alien its returning stare. Even a square ­centimeter of mucous membrane or the thinnest 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 socio-biome: we are we and all our languages, ideas, and cultures, together with their epidemic religious and knowledge wars.

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?

Becoming porous, improper, contagious, learning how not to understand:...