ABSTRACT
Miller Williams, Inaugural Poet for William Jefferson Clinton, wrote a collection of poems entitled Points of Departure. Each begins from within the “thick” of life, where we all fi nd ourselves at any given moment. It is from “points of departure” that we begin as human beings, thrown into specifi c times/places and formed by environments, economics, politics, histories, and societies. Bruno Latour articulates these thick points of departure, perhaps better than most. I quote him to open this book because he articulates best the thick starting point from which I begin. One that is without origin, without an already defi ned wholistic or unifi ed end, and very much in process: Creation is open and beginning points are relative, many, and contested. How then, do we begin to tell our stories from these contested points of departure?
