The state of nature is one of interpenetration and mingling that defies easy categorization. It occupies a middle place, both in the material reality of the world and in our understanding of it. “The middle I speak of is not halfway between two poles; it is porousness that mocks the very idea of separation,” he writes. Akómoláfé outlines our collective biological reality as a state of “brilliant betweenness” that “defeats everything, corrodes every boundary, spills through marked territory, and crosses out every confident line.”
