A Posthuman Grimoire: exploring current and potential relationships between witches/wicca and posthumanism Main Menu

We are 'Other'

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The 'other' has been, in many ways, the focus of posthumanism as I have understood it throughout our class. How the 'other' embraces other 'others' and recognizes an interdependence with the world seems key to moving towards a posthuman world and is the reason that women, POCs, AI, animals, and the queer community (to form a very short list) and their quests for equality have become narratives in the posthuman journey. As we move away from the Vitruvian man and the ideal of human or anthropos (straight, white, male, etc.) that has been continuously pushed in the traditional Humanist understanding of our species we begin to open ourselves up to post anthropocentrism.

From being burned at stakes for supporting 'otherhood' to supporting immigrants in modern day movements the pagan and neopagan Wicca communities have continuously proven their connection with the idea of other. Neopagan practices and witchcraft have become hugely popular in the LGBTQIA+ community, though traditionally pagan and Goddess worshipping is not the most popular way for the queer community to practice their spirituality (Kohr, 2020). Traditional practices move to connect more with the geos than the anthropos and acknowledge 'otherness' as sacred. 

In many ways the Wicca, pagan and neopagan, are more a part of future focused post-anthropocentrism by looking to the traditions of 'otherness' than the layman who wants to understand post humanism but cannot dissociate from the humanist hierarchies that have been societally embedded into our present. 

To want change their must be dissatisfaction and for the majority of the world who has been outwardly identified as 'other' by humanist ideologies a posthuman or post-anthropocentric world must be the goal. 

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