HOMO
SUM[1]
Question: Who has the power to define humanity?
Of late I have been thinking about two
concepts related to humanity: the subhuman and the post-human. I sometimes use the term 'subhuman' to refer
to political figures like Betsy and Doug De Vos and Mike Pence, to refer to
their intellectual masters, persons like Harvey Mansfied and Harry Jaffa, and
to refer to anyone who attacks LGBT persons in the crass-cum-civil public and
masturbatory way that such attackers do.
Despite the fact that right-wing media in the U.S. (the only media
Americans are allowed to consume) legitimize these types of persons, there are
many of us who know the degree of vulgarity, ignorance, backwardness, petty
cowardice, and disgracefulness to humanity that these persons indicate, and
these are those of us who are not fooled by the legitimization of persons for
whom no term seems to capture the reality of what they are other than the term
'subhuman'.
I am taken of late with another term
too, a term which seems to be an attempt to relate the changes in the cultural
production of persons and personhood to the concept of the human, and that is
the term 'post-human'. One of the ways
in which this term comes up for me as a concept is in work or discussions of
(traders, speculators, financial figures, governors) who are understood to be
"psychopathic". Despite the serious
shortcomings of the general construct "psychopathy"[2],
its particular, described elements, elements such as egomania and calculation, seem
to show as disproportionately present in some prominently powerful and
influential social groups, such as financial speculators and governors.[3]
The concept of the "post-human" to me refers generally to the new type of person who is being produced by the manufactory of culture, and this person has characteristics which are described in the literature on the concept of 'psychopathy'. This type of person is also perhaps characterized by a media and church and government manufactured attraction to crude violence and abuse. Michael Alig and Ernie Glam address this in one of the videos in their video series 'The Peeeuw!' (their guest JJ actually brings up the concept of 'posthumanity'):
The concept of the "post-human" to me refers generally to the new type of person who is being produced by the manufactory of culture, and this person has characteristics which are described in the literature on the concept of 'psychopathy'. This type of person is also perhaps characterized by a media and church and government manufactured attraction to crude violence and abuse. Michael Alig and Ernie Glam address this in one of the videos in their video series 'The Peeeuw!' (their guest JJ actually brings up the concept of 'posthumanity'):
In any case, what is being produced
socially is a type of person whose humanity is called into question by terms
like 'post-human'. One could even imagine that what is posthuman could be radically liberatory or progressive, but if so, such a posthuman progression would certainly be created by queers.
And, there is a specifically retrograde and anti-gay element of this current distancing from humanity of which I write here. This element
can be found in, for example, attacks on queer persons which use the pejorative
'homo'. Heterosexists who rest on power
that is not earned but rather lazily fallen back upon by those who could not
create their own power, that is, those who benefit from the heterosexual
political regime without doing anything to earn their power, use this term to
attack gay persons.
What is missing from many discussions
of changes in humanity and in society is, as usual, the queer element. We are still buried in silence constantly,
especially now that the ridiculous idea that "diversity" means that
queers can be just like straights, and that creepy and extremely sexually aggressive
heterosexual families can invade our physical, communal, and psychic spaces and
masturbate their family values all over them.
Are such types even human? I'd like
to ask that question.
The cultural production of persons now
rolls off the assembly line persons who think that the 'gay question' is now
solved, and that liberal-conservative ideas of gay progress are accurate and
correct. History is being written right
over our lives with lies and even with ignorant and traitorous gay complicity
in these lies.
I would like to assert that the ideological
manufactories of personhood, such as Hollywood movies and the educational
system which teaches 'acceptance' and 'tolerance' and other ridiculous and
pathetic ideas about gay personhood, that these manufactories are producing a
post-human type who is anti-gay as well as being sociopathic in other
ways.
When I have been called 'homo' by some creepy
straight guy (and there are very few left who are not creepy), one of the
things that I think is, "Yes, that is right." I am a person in the genuine sense, a
"homo", and you are not. I am
not false and cowardly and highly affectatious; I am not a cowardly adherent to
power structures that I did not myself have the power or courage to either
create or reject; I am not a creepy person who is constantly in a mode of
public masturbation and who defines his identity at the expense of others. In other words, I am a 'homo', a true human
being in the original sense, the proper sense, in the ideal and correct
sense.
I am not a willing and acquiescent product of
the manufactories of personhood. I reject these in a violent, radical, and
revolutionary way, and I fight endlessly against undeserved power, like the
false, incompetent, and cowardly power to define humanity that has been
acquired by the heterosexual political regime and its slavish adherents. I do this because I am a human being in a
true sense. Homo sum.
T.S. Bandito
[1]
Latin for 'I am a human being'.
[2]
For an alternative but related conception of the 'posthuman' pathology which
focuses on the growth of narcissism, see the work of Michael Holloway
King: https://www.michaelhollowayking.com/blog
[3] Noll. Thomas, et al. 'A Comparison of Professional Traders and
Psychopaths in a Simulated Non-Zero Sum Game'.
Catalyst. Vol. 2, No. 2 2012,
1-13; Silver, James. 'The Startling
Accuracy of Referring to Politicians as Psychopaths'. The
Atlantic, July 31, 2012: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/the-startling-accuracy-of-referring-to-politicians-as-psychopaths/260517/ . For a defense of the reification of
'psychopathy', see Hare, Robert D. 'Psychopathy. A Clinical Construct Whose Time Has
Come'. Criminal Justice and Behavior. Vol. 23, No. 1, March 1996, 25-54.
No comments:
Post a Comment