Gore kinship: The cultural economies of killing in an ethnography of invasive pufferfish in Crete

This article introduces gore kinship , a mode of multispecies relation requiring the animal Other’s subjugation or death, through an ethnography of lagopsaro , a pufferfish deemed “invasive” in the Southeastern Mediterranean Sea. Where multispecies scholarship celebrates affirmative kin-making (e.g., Haraway, Braidotti, Tsing), the lagopsaro ’s toxicity, destruction of fisheries and resistance to commodification instead generates extermination economies, including state bounties for killing, vigilante violence, and speculative amateur technologies. Drawing on fieldwork with marine biologists, fishermen, and other social actors on the island of Crete, the article demonstrates how proximity to harm renders gore kinship the preferred engagement, as ecological management interweaves with necropolitical governance. By centering this uncharismatic fish, the article emphasizes the classed and geographic limits of kin-making ethics and argues for multispecies research that confronts the antagonisms structuring human-animal relations.