“We Are All Chimæras:” Ontologies Of Otherness in the Other-than-Human Identity Movement

Abstract

This thesis takes a multi-directional approach to elucidating what is a nuanced and fairly new area of study, that of Internet-based, oppositional, socio-spiritual subcultures, with the focus on the other-than-human identity movement. By undertaking online fieldwork and making a detailed study of the available primary source material, this project offers insights into a phenomenon that has been given very little scholarly attention to date. The online other-than-human identity movement consists of individuals who use computer-mediated-communication to assert, discuss, and articulate a personhood that they feel is profoundly and often spiritually something non-human. This community and the personal mythologies generated by its members will be contextualised within the occultic milieu, where alternative epistemological, ontological, and theological practices are promoted as key to enunciating an authentic sense of self. The specific influences and interests of those who have nonhuman animal identities, called Therianthropes, will then become the focus of discussion. How animal- human relations, transformations, and other imbrications have impacted the personal mythologies of Therianthropes will be assessed by looking at paradigms of liminality, especially those popularised by the occultic milieu. The overarching interest of this study is what the development of other-than-human identities may reveal about Western re-enchantment and the sacralisation of a self that is meaningfully understood to be an ‘other’.