Eels: The Dance of Agency

This short chapter reviews the story of an invasive species—Asian eels in American waterways—that exemplifies an overall view of the world as centered on action and performance rather than words and ideas, and thus it serves as a model for thinking about the following chapters. It discusses human and nonhuman agency and the dance of agency that connects them. It also emphasizes the generality of the analysis: the story of invasive species has the same form as the evolution of the war on terror and of struggles with the coronavirus. The eels story is our first example of the stance of domination and enframing.