Introduction to the question: is confusion a form?

This paper introduces a collection of papers and responses presented as a panel at the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, in June 2013. The theme of the workshop that year was ?The Life of Forms.? Our papers addressed the place of the concept of ?form? in the emergence of terms such as precarity, fragmentation, impasse and others, applied to situations that comprise confusion, ?too-muchness.? We bring ethnographic attention to cosmologies and approaches to daily life amongst African and Africa-descended populations in southwest Nigeria, Brazil and Congo, where there are already ?forms,? such as personification and objectification, that have conventionally been translated into English in terms that convey confusion. Responses from the workshop extend the discussion by drawing on art and mathematics, and an African literary source. In this introduction, some existing past and recent literatures relative to ?form? and ?confusion? are discussed, and the papers and responses of the symposium are introduced.