has always intrigued me is ‘‘like two peas in a pod.’’ To be like two peas in a pod is to be alike. Anyone who has shelled peas knows that peas are not all alike and that seeing them as being alike is already to overlook some important differences. But it is the pod and not the peas that interests me here. This saying suggests for me that likeness is as an e√ect of the proximity of shared residence. This is not just an argument about nurture over nature (that the pod is a nurturing device), as this way of thinking relies on an overly simple logic of causality (the pod causes the peas). Rather, the very proximity of pea to pea, as

well the intimacy of the dwelling that surrounds them like a skin, shapes the very form of the peas. Likeness is thus not ‘‘in’’ the peas, let alone ‘‘in’’ the pod, but rather is an e√ect of their contiguity, of how they are touched by each other and envelop each other. Or if we say that the peas ‘‘share’’ the pod, then we can immediately see how the ‘‘pod’’ does not simply generate what is ‘‘shared’’ in the sense of what is in common, but also what gets divided or distributed into parts. Sara Ahmed, 2006: 124