'Exotic pets'

"People in the humanities, for their part, take a piecemeal approach to application. They will isolate an attractive scientific or mathematical concept and add it to their own disciplinary system, like an exotic pet."

Brian Massumi, Concrete is as concrete doesn't, in Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Duke University Press, Durham 2002, p.21
http://brianmassumi.com/textes/introduction

I like the image of the 'exotic pet'. There are many of those among our everyday textiles, bits and pieces brought back from travels, picked up at a market, bought in a fair trade shop, given as a present: tablemats, napkins, throws, scarves, bags, blouses, belts, cushion covers - visitors from other times and places, their stories intermingling with ours.