This contribution is a conversation, ongoing and consuming, between two siblings. The first, Samantha ****, is a PhD candidate in theopoetics (or, theology through the vein of poetics), researching co-becoming in religion. Co-becoming is the theopoetic notion of touching and being touched, of reciprocity, of the lyrical leaking of things. The second presenter, Jack ******, is a senior research associate in Cambridge, MA, developing assays that can assess how proteases engineered to cleave IgE (the human antibody responsible for allergies) can be evaluated. Cleaving is the biochemical recognition that un-clings antibodies, rendering them impotent, or relatively impotent. Cleaving and co-becoming, this conversation thinks, are related terms: to cleave is to touch, to be touched in return. It is the un-gooeying of bodies that, in turn, renders bodies gooey together. “In your experiments, are you left unchanged,” theopoetics questions biochemistry. Biochemistry responds, not listlessly: “never.” This conversation notes the irony that, in cleaving cells, the body responsible for cleaving is brought closer to them; the biochemist is never not created new in the creation of chemical recognitions. This is cell theopoetics, the catholic (lowercase c) and unconventional theory wherein treatment of cells represents a religiosity of the one enacting the treatment. The laboratory comes to include, in this, the very body of the chemist.
