Ask me more at https://retrospring.net/@bigstuffedcat
Ask me more at https://retrospring.net/@bigstuffedcat
"Antihumanist" means that I have gripes with the concept of "humanism", the ideology that considers human agency and potential as paramount, and in its strong forms consider humans as significantly different from every other animal. Here are two problems I have with it: First, dehumanizing someone to turn their bodies into goods is a known weakness of this framework, and it leads to historical atrocities like Willowbrook and the triangle trade. Second, humanism uses humanization itself as a bludgeon, so that even once you geta seat at the table, the drinks are poisoned. Autistic folks know well the arguments hidden in sentences like "Are you even human if you didn't cry at that movie?", and many a marginalized poet has furrowed an eyebrow at the mention of "the human condition"-- or more subtly, more insidiously, an overly broad epic "we".
Here's an example of the veil between the literal and metaphorical: I sort of identify as plural (that is, multiple people within one body. I also sort of don't, it's complicated.) One of the objections a passer-by might have to that is that "well, you're just taking a helpful metaphor too far, it's not real". To which I say: Break down that veil! Holding a distinction between what is "real" and what is merely "a useful interface" is the real-world equivalent of debating whether Phineas and Ferb actually all takes place in Candace's mind, or whether Jack in Titanic is a time traveler, or some other poppycock.
Additionally, I like that there's no syntactic difference between "Love is a red rose" and "A rose is a red flower"; I think the difference between those sentences is more pragmatic than semantic, and that's a sentiment that generalizes to any number of sentences that declare one thing is another.
I bring this stuff about veils and metaphors up in the context of my work not because I necessarily think that poetry can change someone's heart and make them shatter this veil, but because I think it's reflected pretty heavily in my work once I point it out.
Ask me more at https://retrospring.net/@bigstuffedcat!
