"Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community" is an ethnographic exploration of the Otherkin—a technologically mediated community whose members identify as other-than-human
In “Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community,” Devin Proctor, associate professor of anthropology, explores the loose collective of “otherkin” and “therians” through their experiences, beliefs, identities, and the way they use new media technologies to facilitate community in digital spaces.
“Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community” is an ethnographic exploration of the Otherkin—a technologically mediated community 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. The book argues that the internet-saturated communities of the industrialized Global North have become open to a relationship for sociality beyond the human, something that might be called “animism” in many parts of the world.
The book approaches this phenomenon through the lens of the Otherkin and their practices of digitally mediated identity and community construction. They recognize their biological humanness, but nonetheless experience the non-human memories, urges, and sensations of animals and mythological creatures: wolves, dragons, tigers, elves and so on. 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. However anomalistic, even fantastical they may seem, the Otherkin offer a window into our own complex notions of bodies, Selves, and technologies. They experience an incongruence, i.e., “misfit” in the relationship between their corporeal bodies and their Selves, so they turn to internet technologies to facilitate negotiation between the two.
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. Through an analysis of “awakening narratives” wherein the Otherkin describe the realization of their own non-human natures, a reader comes to know a core group of interlocutors who act as guides through the world of the Otherkin. The book 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. All told, the result is what anthropologist Katrin Tiidenberg calls, “Such a nerdy book, in the absolute best way.”
Human* Being is published fully open access by Lever Press: a university press supported by a consortium of institutions including Amherst, Bowdoin, Yale, UT Austin, Vassar, and Claremont, among others. Lever puts all monographs’ full manuscripts through a single blind peer-review process and publishes at platinum access, meaning that the books are all digital-native and free to the public. Physical copies are also available.