SomaLuminal

And menaced by monsters, fancy lights
Risking enchantment.

T.S. Eliot 

 Transgenic animals are hybridized subject-objects and, as such, destabilize notions of purity and authenticity that emerge in discussions of living animals, especially when we consider taxonomic classifications. Transgenics are like membranes. They leak. Transgenic animals belong to fields of different differences. They come from elsewhere. Nomads: they prefer “to travel” rather than “to dwell.”


Soma (as in Body) + Lumen: Latin for light: light, lantern, lamp, but also clearity and understanding. Lumen is also light of day, as well as a unit of luminous flux, the amount of visible light emitted from a source. But Lumen is also “the central cavity of a hollow structure in an organism or cell.” Lumen: in
nematodes, an esophagus; in fungi, the space bounded by tissue, the central cavity of the cell.