In The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene, Patricia MacCormack may have had the ambition of writing a searing manifesto in the manner of many second-wave feminist screeds. She acknowledges her inspirations, ranging from The Communist Manifesto (1848) to Dada to Valerie Solanas, among others. And she is writing in a period in which many have taken refuge in myth—whether Donna J. Haraway’s Cthulhu, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour’s Gaia, or Michel Serres’s Biogea. Also in this period but in a radically different vein that usually emphasizes ruthless criticism of still existing mythologies, François Laruelle reinterrogates the resources of ancient Gnosticism. The term “Anthropocene” is itself a kind of instantly obsolescent resort to the mythic.1 MacCormack’s tone is interchangeably personal, activist, academic. This may be key to the many contradictions of this book, which is steeped in Continental philosophy while extending it into chiliastic conclusions...
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March 2021
Book Review|
March 01 2021
Review: The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene, by Patricia MacCormack
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene
, by Patricia MacCormack. Bloomsbury Academic
, 2020
. 224 pp./$88.00 (hb), $29.95 (sb).
Jay Murphy
Jay Murphy
Jay Murphy is author of Artaud’s Metamorphosis (2016), and is completing New Media and the Artaud Effect (2021).
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Afterimage (2021) 48 (1): 91–98.
Citation
Jay Murphy; Review: The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene, by Patricia MacCormack. Afterimage 1 March 2021; 48 (1): 91–98. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2021.48.1.91
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