Akty łaski na rzecz końca antropocenu. Od stawania-się-zwierzęciem do aktywizmu śmierci: wprowadzenie do ahumanistycznej filozofii Patricii MacCormack
Acts of Grace for the End of the Anthropocene. From Becoming-Animal to Death Activism: Introduction to Patricia MacCormack’s Ahumanist Philosophy

Author(s): Olivier Nowakowski
Subject(s): Ethics / Practical Philosophy, Social Philosophy
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: ahumanism; posthumanism; Patricia MacCormack; becoming-animal; death activism
Summary/Abstract: The article is the first attempt in Poland to present the ecosophical ahumanist theory derived from the works of Patricia MacCormack. The author describes the Australian philosopher’s project as a radical response to the most pressing problems related to the Anthropocene in a way that not only opposes thinking about the uniqueness of human as a species, but also assumes his slow and methodical extinction. The author situates ahumanism as a separate theoretical proposition and life praxis in the context of posthumanist discourses related to relationality, and also presents the connections between ahumanism and Spinozian ethics. The following sections present two concepts constituting ahumanist thinking – the abolitionistically understood becoming-animal/unbecoming-human and death activism. Both of them strive, on the one hand, to free non-human expressions without discursive violence and, on the other, to limit the human, parasitic presence expressed through queer thinking about failure, passivity and death as life-giving and empathically vitalistic practices. The article also reflects on issues such as the necessity of focusing on organic life as a domain requiring abolition, as well as the paradoxical positioning of ahumanism in relation to humanism. The article is merely the result of the author’s preliminary research and therefore the above content should be treated only as an introduction to an extensive, still developing, intersectional theory.

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