The anglerfish provides a model for a new social relation which is not reducible to that of the isolated loner. The luminous contraption is a pointedly social evolutionary development: when that first dorsal spine broke away and adapted to collect phosphorescent bacteria, the anglerfish reached out into the world, turning against the isolation of the roving hunter (with a marked eroticism) in favor of starting a light-based conversation.
We are welcomed into the dominion of the hostess, the occasion-creator. The tempter/temptress. The performer. The puppetmaster. The attractor. This light is social- its solarity inspires a natural flurry/frenzy/accumulation/accretion of life around it. It speaks eloquent and dazzling lies beguilingly inscribed upon a black tapestry, the charred canvas of the deep.
It arises not from concentration on only the anglerfish's subjecthood, but rather alternating between the roles of the anglerfish and its prey respectively, then stepping back to regard the whole dance from a non-lethal distance. We take turns commanding the fatal light and being commanded by it. We take turns being clever hostess and spellbound dancer. We take turns calling out into the abyss and being beckoned from within the abyss. We take turns gleefully misleading and being willfully misled.
For us, the anglerfish gestures toward a world of devilish invitations whose nature is mischievously ambiguous such that there is no choice but to surrender to being surprised or mystified. (Now you may slowly understand that Society of the Anglerfish is not the organization whose writings you are presently reading, but rather the name of a concept and imaginable universe whose implications we explore here.)