otherkin book manuscript

This book—working title Open Bodies: On Being Non-Human—examines the lived experience of the Otherkin and their practices of identity and community construction. The Otherkin 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. In doing so, they 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. Open Bodies approaches these human bodies as a media conduit, mediating a Self. 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 an “alignment” between the two.

Based on six of ethnographic research, this book examines Otherkin lived experience, troubling conventional notions about our relationships with our bodies, with the virtual, our understandings of the Self, and what it means to be a human. The research focuses on Otherkin daily life, the Otherkin media ecology, boundary policing, the use of science in self-fashioned identity, digital embodiment, and mainstream media response. It finds traction with trans* literature, disability studies, media studies, phenomenology, science and technology studies, epistemology & ontology, and anthropology.

Open Bodies is in post peer-review edits at a major university press, with an expected publish date at some point in my lifetime. Hopefully.