Human* Being
Lever Press / Liverpool University Press
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| Infos : | pages : 275 |
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On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community
A groundbreaking digital ethnography of the Otherkin community
Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community is an ethnographic exploration of the Otherkin, a technologically-mediated community of practice whose members identify as other-than-human, breaking down barriers of identity and calling into question assumptions about what it means to be a human.
Based on a decade of ethnographic research, Human* Being examines Otherkin engagement with the techno-virtuality afforded by the internet, through chat forums, personal blogs, 3D virtual worlds, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Discord, TikTok, and Reddit, troubling conventional notions about our relationships with the virtual and our understandings of the Self.
The Otherkin represent a larger shift in body identity, shown by increasing numbers of people identifying as trans, nonbinary, fluid, and neurodiverse; bodies open to nuance, complication, and multiplicity. Devin Proctor closely examines internal community debates about the limits of non-human identity, avatar creation practices in virtual worlds to approximate inner realities, and the policing of identity constructs toward a stable definition of the phenomenon.
However anomalistic, even fantastical they may seem, the Otherkin offer a window into our own complex notions of bodies, Selves, and technologies.
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Devin Proctor
Devin Proctor is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Elon University, where he also coordinates the American Studies minor. He took his PhD in Anthropology at George Washington University and has taught at George Washington and Georgetown. He explores digital culture, identity construction and new media, and has written on the Otherkin and Therian community, on tradwives and on White nationalist discourse online. His current research looks at the body as a mediating technology among channelers.https://www.devinproctor.com