Inhuman, All Too Inhuman

In: Bjerre , H J 2018 , ' Inhuman, All Too Inhuman ' , Continental Thought & Theory: A Journal of Intellectual Freedom , vol. 2 , no. 2 , pp. 71-81 .

Abstract

There is a principle difference between the structures of, say, an ant colony, however elaborate and finely structured it may be, and that of a modern, capitalist society. On the face of it, this is of course a trivial point. Of course, ants and humans are different. We have much more complicated and varied behaviour, invent technologies and find surprising ways of destroying ourselves. Ants have one or very few purposes, while humans are full of ideas and constantly renew themselves. Nonetheless; elaborating more precisely, wherein the principle difference consists, contains, I would claim, some implications for Alenka Zupančič' precise ontological, as well as political, position, which are not that trivial after all. Something else appears in human society, which exceeds or deviates from nature as it otherwise appears, or which, as Zupančič formulates it, represents nature's own inherent deviation (from itself). The difference between the two communities of ants and humans is therefore not only one of degree. Humans are not (just) more "intelligent", efficient, malicious etc.; they are constructing societies that are based on a radical deviation from (anything else in) nature or is this very deviation. The precise nature of this deviation is in many ways the theme of What IS Sex?, (because sex itself is the name of this deviation), and what I would like to do here is to draw some consequences from it, which relate to the political and ontological commitments in the book that are maybe not entirely clear from the text itself.