Notes on the Possession of Animals by Spirits

  • By: Daniel Rounds
  • Poetry, Performance Text, Creative Non-Fiction

How does the unreal emerge from the real? What does it mean for meaning to become? Fusing elements of poetry, performance text, and creative non-fiction, Rounds addresses these questions by offering a speculative geology (and genealogy) of language that roots human meaning-making activity within a broader set of cosmological, geophysical, biochemical, and historical processes. Inspired by speculative realism, continental philosophy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Zen Buddhism, notes on the possession of animals by spirits takes as its object, the becoming-being of language, tracing out both its prehistory and history in a textual pilgrimage that moves nomad-like from big bang to apocalypse.   

  • Dominique Williams
    Dominique Williams
  • Daniel Rounds is a poet, activist, and applied sociologist based in Sacramento, California. After pursuing studies in social theory, political economy, and social movements at the political science and sociology graduate programs at UCLA, he left the academy to work for organized labor. During his career he has worked for various environmental, social justice, and labor organizations as well as in the legislative and executive branches of California state government. His previous books eros zero (2017) and some distant lateral present (2014) were also published by Ad Lumen Press.