Prologue: THE FIELD

In a Taiwanese restaurant in downtown Sydney, a group of IT managers were quizzing her about the field she worked in. Haltingly, she surmised that the field was probably several interconnecting fields, and that her own background was both literary and philosophical, and that words mattered, and that language in its material strangeness had the power to advance feminist, queer and intersectional politics. She said that new materialism was a field concerned with the matter that made up the world.

One of the IT managers had a glint in his eye. He wanted, he said, to know a bit more about this field. Where was the field? How big was the field? Who created the field? Who else was in the field? Was camping allowed in the field?

In a similarly ludic vein she addressed his queries earnestly, seriously, one by one, and between them sprouted a Field of unknowable dimensions. The meandering directions of the furrows ploughed in The Field were expressed via the medium of rapid-flowing arm movements; the colour of her interlocuter's tent in his agreed patch of The Field was agreed upon; they discussed the implications of holding raves in The Field; the merits of camouflage versus fluorescent clothing in The Field; the presence of cows in The Field; what the cow ate in The Field. He began to ask her whether he would actually be permitted in The Field, but then stopped himself. If The Field operated according to a flat ontology, owned by both everyone and no one, he reasoned, then why would he need to ask her permission?