Spot the Difference: Thinking-with Pattern's Unsettling Powers

Abstract

How and why is pattern undervalued in Western thought? Pattern’s narrative is checkered: historically banned from respectable clothing for its transgressive power; in the sciences relegated to survivalist function; in the arts tamed as decoration. This article advocates for pattern’s radical provocation to think outside cultural conventions and neo-Darwinist constraints. Pattern connects with vitality rather than utility; its radical excess overruns proprietorial boundaries. Pattern blurs delineations of figure and field, operating as a decolonial force, queering the separability of phyla, and unsettling the false binary between nature and culture. Drawing on process philosophy, art, literat..