cells, fully differentiated

Author: Kinsey Cantrell

Publisher Noemi Press (2024)

What does it mean to differentiate—to diagnose, to be diagnosed, to have a diagnosis?

cells, fully differentiated is an account of non-diagnosis, an experiment in mining memory and parsing trauma in an ultimately failed attempt to construct narrative. Against a backdrop of social and economic precarity, the narrator’s effort to understand becomes cyclical. Fully differentiated cells are cells that have been defined, cells that have an explicit role in the functioning of the human body. If understanding and diagnosis are in service of the larger structures of capitalism, then ultimately cells, fully differentiated rejects that understanding.