Spot the Difference: Thinking-with Pattern’s Unsettling Powers

How and why is pattern undervalued in Western thought? Pattern’s narrative is checkered: historically banned from respectable clothing for its transgressive power; in the sciences relegated to survivalist function; in the arts tamed as decoration. This article advocates for pattern’s radical provocation to think outside cultural conventions and neo-Darwinist constraints. Pattern connects with vitality rather than utility; its radical excess overruns proprietorial boundaries. Pattern blurs delineations of figure and field, operating as a decolonial force, queering the separability of phyla, and unsettling the false binary between nature and culture. Drawing on process philosophy, art, literature, histories of fabrics, Black studies, queered biology, ecofeminism, and the continuum of naturecultures, this article experiments with the playful patterning of writing and voices and follows wild and impersonal tendencies, creating space for collective individuation, more-than-human joy, and beauty.