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In times like these, a new ethico-political ideal is required to contest the adequacy of dominant understandings of social interaction as matters of choice and rational decision-making and in contesting these understandings encourage us to imagine social alternatives. We wish to make a contribution to this project of expanding the universe of political discourse as a means to invigorating ethico-political debate. A range of existing vocabularies — the languages of trust (and relatedly respect), care and associated concepts, including corporeal generosity — are currently put forward as the means to contest the dominance of neo-liberal premises about `atomistic individualism'. While many of these accounts focus on nation-states, others attend to an emerging global community. Nevertheless, we have some reservations about these languages and their premises. In our view they tend frequently to locate the `problem' in the character of citizens. We also make the case that such languages and their associated political agendas reinstate aspects of social hierarchy that mimic neo-liberal conceptions of autonomous individualism. Central to our critique is the claim that the problematic aspects of these existing languages of (inter)connection are due to an attenuated understanding of embodiment and an inadequate dialogue between the socio-political and embodiment. It is this inadequate dialogue we wish to redress. In this paper we offer a new ethical ideal called `social flesh' to ground an alternative politics for reconfiguring exploitative social relations. As an ethico-political starting point, `social flesh' highlights human embodied interdependence and in the process configures a new, more transformative political vision. It draws attention to shared embodied reliance, mutual reliance, of people across the globe on social space, infrastructure and resources. Insistence upon this shared reliance underpins a profoundly levelling perspective, a radical politics.

This article explores the relationship between netizens and the Chinese Communist Party by investigating examples of "flesh searches" targeting corrupt officials. Case studies link the initiative of netizens and the reaction of the Chinese state to the pattern of management of social space in contemporary China.

Liminality is an anthropological concept that has been influential in contemporary social studies. This article is written from an organisation culture and studies perspective wherein liminality has been seen: (i) as something that must be controlled, (ii) as a utopian call to creativity, and (iii) as a dystopian entrapment. Liminality has to do with whether the study of practice has been excessively cognitive whereby the human is reduced to concepts of control, efficiency and profit; and whereby the soma (Gr.) of the physical body is marginalised as mind, spirit, and ideation are prioritised. Thus, what of sarx (Gr.) or the flesh of existence (see Merleau-Ponty, Klossowski)? In this article we explore liminality evaluating its relationship to bodily-ness / bodyless-ness, affect and text. We start with a discussion of liminality as originated by the anthropologists van Gennep and Turner, and as pushed aside by Weick, but lionised as creativity by Kostera, and denounced as stagnation by Szakolczai. This is followed by an auto-ethnographic case study. The case study points to the unheimisch2of liminality which we examine via Pierre Klossowski's manifoldness. Realising that text about liminality and its embodiment easily becomes paradoxical (unembodied and affectless), we present a non-textual (i.e., not written) visual reaction to the case; again, in the spirit of Klossowski; and we conclude with reflections co-inspired by Maurice Merlau-Ponty on the physical affectivity of liminality.

Drawing on contemporary trans* scholarship, I highlight an incorporeal, affective dimension of trans* embodiment, which I argue operates nonlinearly, enmeshing a past-present-future becoming. I show that the dynamic movement underlying both trans* and matter suggests their mutual imbrication—a mutual imbrication that trans*es materiality. Through the concept of autopoiesis, or the ability of systems to self-organise, I link trans*ed materiality at the micro level (cellular and quantum) to the social processes of trans* assemblages. Autopoiesis emerges as an affective realm, a dimension of trans*ed materiality and a process of trans* assemblages, all of which are integral in the production of space and time. As trans* bodies materialise, they create unique temporal embodiments that challenge universal frameworks of chronological time, highlight the nonlinear resonation of matter and enmesh past-present-future in open-ended becomings. The resulting ontogenetic, 'involutionary' processes of creative evolution produce unique temporalities that form the basis of new embodiments, new subjectivities, and new potentials for existence. As autopoietic processes produce new entities, the uniqueness of each becoming-trans* transforms the spatial and temporal context in which the becomings occur. Keeping in mind that becoming is never complete, I conclude that trans* temporalities are nonlinear, affective processes involved in the production of becoming-trans*. Trans* temporalities are, thus, entangled in an open-ended past-present-future.

This article investigates the role of state-nationalist discourse in the rise of online nationalism by looking at case studies of nationalist flesh searches. Nationalist flesh searches target those seen as traitorous, anti-China or anti-government, and expose the victims' private information as well as their alleged crimes, to the online public. Through examination of this activity, the study contextualizes the rise of online nationalism within the historical and political context of the Party's renewed emphasis on nationalism in education and state media, and the role that this state-nationalism plays in social management. Case studies follow the development of nationalist flesh searches, examining the motivations, language and goals of these online nationalists, as well as the actions of those targeted and the role, if any, of the state and the state media. (J Contemp China /GIGA)

Abstract
Actionism, Performance and Body Art have produced forms that still provoke in their radicalism and brutality and raise many questions. Regardless of the theme—love, violence, gender, death, sexuality, killing of animals, ritual practices and myths, ecology, criticism of the ideology and so on—they are almost always characterized by an explicit and demonstrative exposure of flesh. The topic of my research is the body as a medium of the human act. Does the body elicit different "corporations of the mind" or does it draw attention to its own complex naked presence and extensionality in every elementary social interaction? Is the body unquantifiable—imponderabilia, unpredictable, and is it spinning out of the generated statistics of the system research?

Abstract
This interview with the intellectual historian Gary Wilder explores the philosophical and methodological theses in his overall work, particularly focusing on his 2022 book Concrete Utopianism. The conversation explores such themes as relationships among solidarity, filiality, and freedom; the forces and fears of normative claims; the definition of an image; and the place of the flesh in a critical Marxism, among others. This is the second conversation in a series initiated by Salma Shamel (PhD candidate at New York University) with anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and media theorists whose work is located at the intersection of intellectual history, critical theory, and historical change.

This article examines connections between ancient training of the mind and body to delineate a concept of phusiopoiesis, the production of one's nature. The category of nature (phusis) for the presocratics and sophists operates not as an essential and unchangeable state, but rather as a malleable disposition, one that can be altered through a process of production (poiesis). Such a configuration of phusis in pre-Socratic fragments, Hippocratic treatises, and philosophical discussions of the body, medicine, and training holds implications for ancient training practices, most especially challenging assumptions about the category of natural talent thought to be necessary for success as a rhetor or athlete. This bodily transformation entails at least three dynamics of phusiopoietic training: friendship, masochism, and erotics.