Man Against Being : Body Horror and the Death of Life

Beneath the world-destroying violence of male dominion, a morbid terror churns. Man’s is a Kingdom of Fear, and madness reigns, for what has men so spooked is something they cannot run from: their own bodies. The ruling fathers have historically reacted to this predicament by scorning biological material reality and chasing after the consolations of domination, delusional transcendence, and, when desperation sets in, revenge against the rejected real world. Man Against Being traces body horror as the through line that unifies manmade society’s hallmark oppressions and atrocities. Moving from the mind/body separation that is patriarchal doctrine’s starting point to the brutal subjugation of all creatures scapegoated as bad bodies so men can play at being pure minds, from ‘born in the wrong body’ to the transhumanists' dreamt-of ascent into bodiless virtuality. Drawing on a holistic ecofeminist analysis of male dominion’s cascading devastations, Aurora Linnea argues with poetic insight that, if men are determined to do away with bodies and biological life, the antidote to patriarchy’s apocalyptic charter must necessarily involve a return to the flesh and blood of matter, a reintegration of body and mind and living earth.

Man Against Being diagnoses the manmade world with a terminal case of somatophobia: fear of the body. Horrified by the facts of the flesh, men have spent the last several millennia on the run from, and at war with, the mortal material reality of the human ‘ meatsack’ . This deep-rooted antagonism towards biological being has given rise to cultures defined by denial and dread, and societies doomed to self-annihilation. Because life on earth is incarnate, men’ s fantasies of transcendent escape from bodiliness are today proving themselves not only hopeless, but deadly. Linnea weaves together such disparate sources as monster movies, medieval literature, science fiction, and social psychology to expose body horror as the common thread and theme that creeps darkly along the underside of manmade cultures, the basic pathology that has poisoned men against life itself. Seeking an antidote to patriarchal civilization’ s apocalyptic flight from corporeal, biological reality, Man Against Being charts a return to the flesh and blood of the matter, a vital reintegration of body and mind and living earth. For the path forward out of male dominion is a homecoming to our truest nature.

Beneath the world-destroying violence of male dominion, a morbid terror churns. Man’s is a Kingdom of Fear, and madness reigns, for what has men so spooked is something they cannot run from: their own bodies. The ruling fathers have historically reacted to this predicament by scorning biological material reality and chasing after the consolations of domination, delusional transcendence, and, when desperation sets in, revenge against the rejected real world. Man Against Being traces body horror as the through line that unifies manmade society’s hallmark oppressions and atrocities. Moving from the mind/body separation that is patriarchal doctrine’s starting point to the brutal subjugation of all creatures scapegoated as bad bodies so men can play at being pure minds, from ‘born in the wrong body’ to the transhumanists' dreamt-of ascent into bodiless virtuality. Drawing on a holistic ecofeminist analysis of male dominion’s cascading devastations, Aurora Linnea argues with poetic insight that, if men are determined to do away with bodies and biological life, the antidote to patriarchy’s apocalyptic charter must necessarily involve a return to the flesh and blood of matter, a reintegration of body and mind and living earth.

Beneath the world-destroying violence of male dominion, a morbid terror churns. Man’s is a Kingdom of Fear, and madness reigns, for what has men so spooked is something they cannot run from: their own bodies. The ruling fathers have historically reacted to this predicament by scorning biological material reality and chasing after the consolations of domination, delusional transcendence, and, when desperation sets in, revenge against the rejected real world. Man Against Being traces body horror as the through line that unifies manmade society’s hallmark oppressions and atrocities. Moving from the mind/body separation that is patriarchal doctrine’s starting point to the brutal subjugation of all creatures scapegoated as bad bodies so men can play at being pure minds, from ‘born in the wrong body’ to the transhumanists'' dreamt-of ascent into bodiless virtuality. Drawing on a holistic ecofeminist analysis of male dominion’s cascading devastations, Aurora Linnea argues with poetic insight that, if men are determined to do away with bodies and biological life, the antidote to patriarchy’s apocalyptic charter must necessarily involve a return to the flesh and blood of matter, a reintegration of body and mind and living earth.