posted on 2023-08-30, 15:16authored byPatricia MacCormack
The anthropocene has seen the human not only manipulate nonhuman forces but territorialise all forces so they may be understood or valued only via anthropocentric formal logic. This article explores the ethical urgency of the need to open up new spaces, primarily via the deformalised (or at least non-anthropomorphic) flesh where can be explored the concept of the nonhuman. In the context of the article the nonhuman does not only refer to nonhuman animals, but also the human's necessary becoming-nonhuman in order to liberate the Earth from the violent tendencies of anthropocentric ideology and/and as action. The article does address our human relations with nonhuman animals as part of the need to become-nonhuman without fetishizing other life forms or human minoritarians. This is suggested via three trajectories – nonhuman becomings via art, via nature and via radical abolitionist ethics. All three offer ways in which the subject can find escape routes and philosophical fissures through which new pathways may emerge to alter interactions between humans, humans and nonhuman animals and the world itself as a system of relation rather than human occupation.
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in 'Somatechnics'. The Version of Record is available online at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/soma.2015.0157