Snake(s)kin: The Intertwining Mêtis and Mythopoetics of Serpentine Rhetoric

Abstract

Snakes suffer from a bad reputation, and few human allies stand to prevent their extirpation. Yet more rhetorically powerful than any ethical injunction halting human violence upon nature, a sensuous moment of intertwining with the serpent can enact onto-epistemological shifts and dispositional transformations. Through a serpentine mêtis and mythopoetics of cunning wisdom and knowledge production, we can imaginatively, transversally, re-member the feeling of raising serpentine energy along the spine, sloughing off old skin, and slithering down among the roots and rhizomes into the depths of uncertainty. Opening up a space for the otherwise, responding to the hum of rhetorical energy coursing through our more-than-human relations, we may still live to tell new stories with the snakes and the rest of our strange kin.