Refrains for More-Than-Human Intimacy: Mutual Inclusion With a Canine Difference

Abstract

In my article, I speculate on intimacy that embraces uncertainty, difference, and/in more-than-human relations. An intimacy that embraces uncertainty is what Massumi characterizes as “indiscernable expression”—that which may not be clearly perceived—through play and walking encounters with humans and dogs. That which differs from itself has preoccupied my relationship with my dog and provides an occasion to think with intimacy toward humans and animals. Writing performatively, I depict encounters with my dog and present them as unfolding experiences that enter into powerful refrains—Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of a vector in which certainty and uncertainty occupy the same space, in which the nameable and certainty coexist with the improvised and defamiliarized, and in which kin and intimacy are made through uncertain relations.