Combining is the long-awaited second collection of essays, reflections, poems, and artwork by Nora Bateson.
“Nora Bateson writes like no other—her “ecology of communication” is poetry, observation, wisdom, and rage blended into a coherent narrative that sinks down deep and swirls. I read her words (as a woman, lover, mother, sister, daughter, psychologist, therapist, citizen) over and over, each time feeling more and more alive. Before her pages, I would despair at the lack of anger and dissent in, and at, our institutions; at the vapid acceptance of how we have made things—discourses, structures, and acts of harm, holding up and holding together the status quo.
Reading Combining was like holding my breath and slowly breathing out, all at once. Excitement and relief crashing together into a soothing song, blending and curving with the strength of a spine.
Prepare to go to the places we are not supposed to go, in order to be in the spaces we are truly meant to be.”
~ Taiwo Afuape, Clinical Psychologist and Systemic Psychotherapist, Author of Power, Resistance and Liberation in Therapy with Survivors of Trauma
Combining is a blend of intellectual inquiry, essays, emotional engagement, storytelling, poetry, and graphic art; Combining is an invitation to nurture genuine connections and navigate a world brimming with warm data!
“In Combining—love, humor, curiosity, and vulnerability entwine amidst the trials of a world in flux. As we face the polycrisis, Nora Bateson urges us to swerve from the traditional paths and to dismantle the illusions of fitting in. She beckons us to step into a world where learning, un-cutness, and readiness converge, promising both revelation and revolution.
Like a mole in the garden of our times, velvet, sharp-eyed and half underground, Nora Bateson’s Combining undermines our most precious certainties, offers nourishment, unseen circulation, surprises, mounds, chambers and drainage tunnels for our thinking, living and relating.
Using multiple artistic and literary forms, resisting always the urgent request for answers, checklists and action points, Nora’s work is the embodiment of the Warm Data approach that she teaches. It is the most telling example of what she has named “aphanipoiesis”—that prolific tendency (characteristic of all living systems) for things to come together or coalesce unseen towards vitality.
If ever a book could work overnight, discreetly, very quietly, to change our minds, it’s Combining.”
~Triarchy Press
Advance Praise for Combining . . .
Podcasts with Nora discussing the book
Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff
“Nora Bateson shares the sense, and sensibility, of true interdependence — and helps us muster the courage to embrace ambiguity.”
Wisdom & Action with Berry Liberman
“Nora Bateson on systems thinking and the ‘meadow’ crisis”
Edgy Ideas
“Nora Bateson shares her thinking about the ecology of communication, which is at the heart of her latest book 'Combining'.”
The Wicked Opportunities
“Pathways of the unimagined with Nora Bateson”
The Bigger Picture
“How reality learns with Nora Bateson”
Amplifying Cognition
“Nora Bateson on ecology, increasing possibility, warm data, and intergenerational learning”
Upcoming Events
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Combining — Book Reading and Discussion with Nora Bateson
Coming Soon!
