Madness and Animality: Notes on Therianthropy

Theta-Delta: a widely acknowledged symbol 

of therianthropy created in 2003

 

 

I.

 

Thanks to the internet, an entire sub-culture has developed that has adopted the word therianthropy [1] to describe a sense of spiritual or psychological identification with a non-human animal. Members of this sub-culture typically refer to themselves as therianthropes, or, simply, therians. 

 

Because therianthropy is often a very individual matter, there are no fixed rules governing what it does and doesn't involve. This can make it a rather difficult subject of which to speak - particularly for outsiders such as myself. However, I shall do my best (with apologies in advance to any therians reading who might find what I say crass, mistaken, or offensive).  

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps the first question that arises is: How do therians understand their non-human side and how does this relate to their human aspect; is it separated or integrated, experienced mutually or exclusively? 

 

Those who are keen to promote a more esoteric understanding of therianthropy, believe that they either partly or fully possess the spirit or soul of an animal. Such persons often draw inspiration from stories of shape-shifting found in Celtic, Norse, and Native American mythologies and argue that they are reviving an ancient shamanic tradition.

 

On the other hand, those therians who prefer a more material explanation of their condition argue for some peculiarity in their neurophysiology, or perhaps suggest a genetic difference. Some even adopt concepts such as species dsyphoria and transspeciesism.

 

But most therians, however, are content to accept that what they are engaged in is simply fantasy and/or a sometimes extreme form of role play. 

 

 

III.

 

Usually, therians identify with a single species of animal. And the species with which a particular therian identifies is sometimes referred to as that individual's theriotype.

 

However, there are those - known as cladotherianthropes - who identify with all members of an animal family and even some who (schizophrenically) identify with a whole menagerie of completely dissimilar creatures. 

 

It comes as little surprise to discover that the majority of therians identify with large felines and canines, such as tigers and wolves. But there are some who identify in non-mammalian terms as reptiles, birds, or even insects (the latter overly-identifying perhaps with Gregor Samsa). 

 

 

IV.

 

Another term often heard in therian circles is shifting ... One which is used to signify a radical change of perception and cognitive outlook following a move made from human to nonhuman identity. 

 

This shift may be partial or complete, substantial or subtle, but it is always subjectively dramatic unless one happens to be a contherianthrope; a term coined to refer to those individuals who feel that rather than shifting between human and nonhuman ways of being, they always embody and experience both forms simultaneously and have merged human and animal aspects into a single integrated whole. 

 

For contherianthropes, shifting, if the term means anything, is akin to a mild change of mood.

 

More controversially is the claim made by some therianthropes that they undergo an actual physical change to their appearance. This, however, is very much a minority view and most people - both within the therianthrope sub-culture and outside it - remain sceptical that gross physical transformations à la Lawrence Talbot can actually occur. 

 

 

V.

 

The question that ultimately arises is: Are therians mentally disturbed? 

 

By which I mean, can therians be characterised as individuals who manifest a clinically significant disturbance in their cognition, emotional regulation, and/or behaviour that is usually associated with distress or impairment in important areas of functioning?

 

The answer, I suppose, depends ... 

 

For whilst some therians can legitimately be labelled as schizophrenic, struggling as they seem to be with a serious dissociative identity disorder - and whilst a rare few might even be diagnosed as suffering from clinical lycanthropy, a condition in which the subject fully believes he or she has transformed into an animal and behaves in a manner that seriously impacts upon their ability to function socially - the majority of therianthropes are probably suffering no more than a type of body dysmorphia. 

 

That is to say, a non-clinical condition which, whilst resulting in an acute dissatisfaction with their human form and appearance, is ultimately little different from the feeling experienced by those who seek gender reassignment or wish to undergo other types of surgical and non-surgical body modification, for example. 

 

Personally, I don't have a problem with such people and find those who do raise objections on moral and/or pseudo-medical grounds, as far more disturbed and disturbing. But it does lead into the wider debate concerning madness and animality, which is interestingly addressed by Foucault in his work Madness and Civilization (1964) [2] ...

 

 

VI. 

 

For Foucault, animality - like insanity - is a constructed category that is determined differently in different times and places. During the Middle Ages, he writes, "legions of animals, named once and for all by Adam, symbolically bear the values of humanity" [3]. 

 

But, by the beginning of the Renaissance, "animality has escaped domestication by human symbols and values; and it is animality that reveals the dark rage, the sterile madness that lie in men's hearts" [4]. 

 

Animality and wildness were now firmly linked, but still the mad were thought to embody some of the more positive qualities of animals, making them potential sources not only of inhuman passion, but also divine revelation. This, however, was to radically change in what Foucault thinks of as the Classical Age of Reason (c.1650-1800). 

 

During this period, madness was completely "divested of spiritual and pedagogic value" [5] and whereas animality "once had value as the sign of the extra-worldly" [6] it was now simply identified as a form of inferior being and degraded existence. Those who now gave themselves over to madness and behaved like wild beasts, would be denied human status and all the accompanying privileges; they would be treated like animals and subjected to harsh disciplinary training: 

 

"Those chained to the cell walls were no longer men whose minds had wandered, but beasts preyed upon by a natural frenzy: as if madness, at its extreme point […] managed to rejoin […] the immediate violence of animality.” [7]

 

For Foucault, the dehumanization process is crucial here and has the following meaning: it shows that man no longer has any deep fear of (or respect for) the animal and that "animal metamorphosis is no longer the visible sign of infernal powers" [8]. 

 

Foucault continues: 

 

"The animal in man no longer has any value as the sign of a Beyond; it has become his madness, without relation to anything but itself … The animality that rages in madness dispossesses man of what is specifically human in him; not in order to deliver him over to other powers, but simply to establish him at the zero degree of his own nature. For classicism, madness in its ultimate form is man in immediate relation to his animality […]" [9]

 

The 18th-century is the great century of the animal-madmen - as it is of vampires and werewolves - the century of lunatics with superhuman strength that protected them from ill health and extreme conditions of hunger, cold, and pain (thus they had no need for adequate food or clothing, or for kind treatment); the century in which the treatment of the insane is based upon the perceived need not to restore the human element, but to eradicate it entirely. 

 

For only when the madman has completely become a beast, can the true scandal of madness, which is the presence of the animal in man, be resolved. 

 

 

VII.

 

Where, then, does this leave us? 

 

Well, in a sense, I kind of admire those therianthropes and other lunatics today who defiantly declare themselves to be beasts; perhaps it takes a certain degree of courage as well as mania to travel to the very edge of humanity and into an unnatural animal becoming, if only as a mad fantasy. 

 

The category of animality will undoubtedly one day be constructed differently; perhaps we will even come to value and admire animals once more. But in the meantime, for any man or woman to identify themselves as a therian is to say in a Rimbaud-like manner: I am a beast, and I am of an inferior species for all eternity [10]. 

 

 

Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence Talbot 

in The Wolf Man (1941)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Therianthropy is a generic term for any transformation of a human being into another animal form, derived from the Greek terms, therion, meaning beast and anthrōpos, meaning man. Often, the term lycanthropy - which, strictly speaking, refers to were-wolfism - is used as a virtual synonym, but I prefer to use the former term in order to avoid confusion.

 

[2] Focault's work was originlly published in 1961 as Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique. The 1964 English translation by Richard Howard was an abridged version of this book. I am using the 2004 Routledge edition of this text. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p. 18.

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, 'The Animal Question in Continental Philosophy', an introduction to Animal Philosophy, ed. Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco, (Continuum, 2004), p. xxi.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Foucault, Madness and Civilization, p. 68. 

 

[8] Ibid., p. 69.

 

[9]  Ibid.

 

[10] I'm paraphrasing Rimbaud writing in his extended prose poem Une Saison en Enfer (1873); see the section translated into English as 'Bad Blood' where he confesses that he has always belonged to an inferior race. 

 

This material is a revised extract from 'In the Company of Wolves: Animal Transformation Fantasy', Chapter 5 of Zoophilia, Vol. III of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

      

A related post to this one on the furry fandom and otherkin - also taken from the above work - can be read here.  

Reflections on Venus Emerging Slowly From an Old Bathtub

The Venus of Willendorf [1]

Image: Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

nhm-wien.ac.at

 

 

I.

 

I recently reflected on how the figure of a woman emerging from the sea allows us to glimpse something of the goddess Aphrodite in her flesh; and how, in turn, this invites us to consider the relationship we have with our own bodies and the bodies of others (as well as the nature of the divine) [2]. 

 

Of course, such meditations are made easier when that woman is, for example, Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder, or Ana de Macedo skipping among the fishes and rock pools, like a Portuguese Venus; one could spend all day happily musing on lithe and lovely limbs and firm young breasts, etc. 

 

It is not so easy, or so pleasurable, however, to consider what we might collectively term vile bodies - i.e., old bodies, ugly bodies, obese bodies, deformed bodies, mutilated bodies, and, at the extreme, dead bodies (there is surely nothing more repulsive than a decomposing corpse, which is why necrophilia remains such a rare phenomenon).

 

The problem, as Nietzsche pointed out, is that everything ugly weakens and saddens the spectator [3]. Thus, reflecting upon vile bodies has a dangerous psycho-physiological effect; it actually depresses and deprives one of strength. 

 

Ugliness, like sickness, is therefore not only a sign and symptom of degeneration, but a cause of such; which is why healthy happy souls prefer to be surrounded by beauty and turn to art when such is lacking in reality; for art, as Nietzsche says, is the great stimulant of life - a counterforce to all denial of wellbeing [4]. 

 

However, having said all this, the philosopher, as Nietzsche understands them, is one who lives dangerously and who can not only embrace more of human history (in its entirety) as their own, but, like the artist or great poet, find beauty in those individuals, things, and events where most people would see only horror and look away in disgust. 

 

 

II. 

 

And so we come to Rimbaud's poem, Venus Anadyomène (1870); one that I think important, but which critics often overlook, or dismiss as less serious than his later (more mature) verses. 

 

For one thing, the poem - written when Rimbaud was just sixteen - challenges static and traditional ideals of feminine beauty [5] and dares readers to glimpse some aspect of the divine even in an ulcerated anus (which, admittedly, isn't easy). 

 

Wherever the poet might be taking us, we're a long way from Botticelli and moving towards Bataille territory; this hideously beautiful Venus in an old bathtub serves as the vehicle of love in much the same manner that a drunken woman vomiting - or a dog devouring the stomach of a goose - perform the role [6].   

 

Ultimately, not being a scholar of French literature or a Rimbaud expert, I'm unsure what he intended with this verse; is it a serious (slightly disturbing) attempt to revalue beauty, or simply an adolescent parody of the Venus myth - who knows? 

Anyway, readers can decide for themselves by clicking here to access Venus Anadyomène as found in Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a bilingual edition trans. Wallace Fowlie and revised by Seth Whidden, (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Venus of Willendorf is a small figurine, carved from limestone tinted with red ochre, and believed to have been made almost 30,000 years ago in the Paleolithic period (i.e., the Old Stone Age). It was found in 1908, during archaeological excavations at a site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria. Anyone wishing to see it should get along to the Natural History Museum in Vienna. 

 

[2] See the post entitled 'And Venus Among the Fishes Skips' (18 Feb 2022): click here. 

 

[3] See Nietzsche, 'Expeditions [or Skirmishes] of an Untimely Man', §20, in Twilight of the Idols.  

 

[4] See Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), §853 (II), p. 452.    

[5] For more on the challenge to these ideals presented by Rimbaud's poem, see the essay by Seth Whidden, 'Rimbaud Writing on the Body: Anti-Parnassian Movement and Æsthetics in "Vénus Anadyomène"', in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 27, no. 3/4, (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), pp. 333–45. This essay can also be accessed online via JSTOR: click here.

 

[6] See Georges Bataille, 'The Solar Anus', in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Alan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), pp. 5-9. The lines I refer to are on p. 6. 

 

 

Je fixais des vertiges

 

I woke up this morning to discover that the room was spinning around and whilst Bataille might imagine vertigo as a pathway to the Void and a fall into ecstatic joy, I have no interest in touching the impossible or experiencing dizziness to the point of trembling, thank you very much. 

 

Right now, I just want to make the whirling world stand still, as Rimbaud would say ...

 

 

See: Rimbaud, 'Délires II: Alchimie du verbe', Une saison en enfer (1873): click here.

 

 

I'm Pretty Vacant - But I'm Not Sure I Belong to the Blank Generation

Virgin Records (1977)

I.

I remember listening to a run down of the charts in the summer of 1977; anxiously waiting to press record on my cassette player when Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols finally blasted out and hoping against hope that Tony Blackburn wouldn't ruin things by inanely talking over the greatest ever intro to a pop song; an intro that, if you like, consummated my love affair with punk.

Released on July 1st, Pretty Vacant was the band's third single and, unlike God Save the Queen, you could actually listen to it on the radio, despite Rotten's aggressive phrasing of the term vacant, sung repeatedly in the chorus with a strong emphasis on the second syllable. Indeed, you could even watch the official promo video, directed by Mike Mansfield, on Top of the Pops.


II.

According to Malcolm, Pretty Vacant was written at his instigation and directly inspired by Richard Hell's Blank Generation (which was itself a punk re-imagining of Bob McFadden's and Rod McKuen's 1959 single The Beat Generation).

Just as Rotten - by Hell's own admission - pushed the nihilistic persona that he'd originally developed in a more extreme direction, so is Pretty Vacant a far more provocative kettle of fish than its American counterpart. The latter is clever and vaguely amusing, but it lacks something in comparison. One can imagine Steve Jones hearing Blank Generation and crying out for it to be given some bollocks.

Perhaps the difference (and, for me, the problem) is that Hell allows himself the option of opting out of his own lifestyle - he can take it or leave it - but the Sex Pistols have no choice but to affirm the beauty of their own emptiness without caring what anyone thinks of this.

Is it a class thing, a cultural thing, or something else? Interestingly, Hell has spoken about the chauvinism of British punks who would sneer at the American bands and insist on the UK origins of the movement.

Whatever it is, there's something crucially different between the two songs. When one listens to Blank Generation one feels that one is listening to Hell's private vision or personal experience; it's basically a poem set to music. Pretty Vacant, by comparison, is a call to arms that genuinely articulates the feelings of a generation. And, whilst there's humour in both songs, it's more crudely sarcastic than cleverly ironic in the latter.

Ultimately, you don't need to have read Blake, Rimbaud and Burroughs to understand the Sex Pistols; you just need a mistrust of hippies, an eye for fashion, and an instinct for chaos. 

Play:

Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols: click here. 

Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids: click here. 

A Letter to Heide Hatry (Parts I and II)

Heide Hatry

I. The Sickness Unto Death

Dear Heide,

Many thanks for your fascinating five-part response to the posts on Torpedo the Ark that referred to your recent body of work, Icons in Ash. I'm touched that you kindly took the time to write not only at length, but with such good grace and critical intelligence. I will attempt to reply in the same manner and to each part in turn. However, I should point out that I'm unconvinced about the possibility (or desirability) of serious discussion: either two people agree - in which case there's not much to say; or they disagree - in which case there's nothing to say. This renders the attempt to exchange ideas narcissistic and futile; a vacuous academic game to be avoided at all costs.

Having said that, there's no need for absolute silence; we can surely keep company and converse without attempting to discuss things and break words apart. It's just a question of bearing in mind this idea of incommensurability and accepting that even speaking subjects who seem to share a language never truly understand one another; that there's always a pathos of distance between things, between people. It's not surprising, therefore, that you fail to "recognise" yourself in my words: for I don't know you. Indeed, if I might be permitted to paraphrase Nietzsche once more, we knowers are unknown even to ourselves ...

You ask if I have "really looked" at your work. Sadly, as I don't live in New York, I've not been afforded the opportunity to do so. I've had to make do with printed reproductions and images online. Perhaps this explains why I haven't "felt" it (though I'm not quite sure I know what you mean by this). Ultimately, it's fair to say that I'm more interested in what you (and others) say about the portraits, rather than the portraits themselves. As I'm neither a practicing visual artist, nor a qualified art critic, you'll have to forgive my insensitivity.   

I'm pretty much in agreement with your remarks on Deleuze and Guattai; certainly theirs was a project critical and clinical in nature and they regarded themselves as cultural physicians. But it should be noted that they have a very unusual understanding of what constitutes health and it doesn't coinicide with the dreary and functional good health which we've been given and which we're endlessly told we have to look after.

In fact, it's an irresistable and delicate form of health that the conventionally robust who eat their five-a-day and visit the gym after work might find feeble and sickly. The key thing is, whilst strength preserves, it's only sickness that advances. That's why we need our decadents, our convalescents, and those artists and philosophers who have returned from the Underworld with bloodshot eyes and pierced eardrums. You mention Artaud and Rimbaud. I might mention others - such as D. H. Lawrence, for example. Theirs may not have been "salutary examples of the good life", but they were vital figures nevertheless. 


II. On Death and Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence       

I'm very sorry if my suggestion that, in calling up the spirits of deceased loved ones, you were seeking to have the last word upset you. It might well be that such a remark displays all of the faults you ascribe to it (banality, reductiveness, wrong-headedness, tone-deafness, remarkable ungenerosity, and wilful misunderstanding). Nevertheless, it surely has to be admitted that the dead, being dead, have no right of reply and cannot give consent.

In fact, one of the irritating things about the dead is that no matter how loud you cry and scream at them, or or how fully you explain yourself to them, they never listen and they never respond. Again, it's not so much rudeness or indifference on their part - it's just how they are (dead).

Obviously, we disagree on this ... It might please you to know, however, that I like the idea of the souls of the dead investing the lives of the living. And of the dead who do not die, but look on and silently help. It might be noted too that I've written sympathetically and approvingly of necrophilia and spectrophilia. But still - with the possible exception of those posthumous individuals who, as Nietzsche says, only enter into life once they've died - I can't quite accept that the dead have a great deal to offer (although, to be fair, neither do the noisy majority of the living). 

Moving on ... I opened my eyes wide in astonishment when you referred to (human) life as the "most glorious phenomenon" - but decided you were only teasing. I mean, Heide, c'mon - you can't be serious! At best life is epiphenomenal - a rare and unusual way of being dead, as Nietzsche describes it. To privilege life over death is just prejudice. I'm all for living life joyfully, but it's only ever a practice of joy before death and the real festivity begins when we make a return to material actuality.

To be clear: I'm not championing that negative representation of death conceived as a form of judgement which comes at the end of a life upon which, as you say, it "exerts an oppressive and defeatist effect". Rather, I'm speaking of death as a form of becoming (a line of flight and a dissolution). You mention at this point in your comments Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence and, clearly, it speaks of both types of death which Keith Ansell-Pearson characterises as heat death and fire death. Please note, however, that there's never any attempt at reconciliation in Nietzsche's work.

I wouldn't say Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is a "life-affirming" teaching (even you put this phrase in scare quotes); what it affirms, rather, is repetition and the difference engendered by it (the Same - das Gleiche - is not a fixed essence and does not refer to a content in and of itself). Nor is it a cheerful teaching - it's a form of tragic pessimism; there's no promise of salvation or any hope of transcending existence precisely as is. The happiness it promises is forever tied to pain and suffering (as well as moonlight, spiders and demons).      


To read parts III-V of this letter to Heide Hatry, please click here. 

To read Heide Hatry's extensive series of comments please see the posts to which they are attached: Heide Hatry: Icons in Ash and On Faciality and Becoming-Imperceptible with Reference to the Work of Heide Hatry. 

The Case of Rachel Dolezal

The controversial case of Rachel Dolezal continues to fascinate and to challenge many of our ideas and misconceptions concerning race and the cultural construction of identity. 

Ms Dolezal, according to her parents, is a white woman of predominantly European descent who has been wilfully misrepresenting and disguising herself as an African American in order to advance her career and rise to a position of prominence within the black community. For not only did she become a university professor of African studies, specialising in the intersection of gender, race and class, but also president of her local NAACP.  

To be fair, Dolezal grew up in a family with adopted black siblings and attended a school in Mississippi where most of her friends and fellow pupils were black. She also married (and subsequently divorced) a black man with whom she has a child. But, of course, none of this serves to make her African American - anymore than does the deep-tanned skin, the clothing, the jewellery, or the make-up and hairstyling. Biologically speaking, she remains what she has always been: a white woman.

But since when has race ever simply been a question of biology? 

Thus, I have to admit I'm sympathetic to Dolezal and know precisely what she means when she suggests that her case is far more complex and multi-layered than many of her critics (or her parents) understand or wish to concede. This includes, for example, that great paragon of sensitive and sophisticated commentary, Piers Morgan, who brands Dolezal a lying, deluded idiot and is clearly outraged by the thought that race might be reconfigured as a question of style rather than blood and the fear that other essential binaries might in this manner also be problematized.

For Morgan - and he explicitly says as much - race is an either/or issue: you're either black or you're white. And Dolezal is 100% white by birth and breeding and can never be anything but white. Morgan thus brands her carefully crafted and performed identity fraudulent and a mockery; akin to wearing blackface. It would be laughable, he says, were it not so serious, concluding that Dolezal has "committed an appalling act of deception that deserves every heap of abuse now raining down on her head".

Of course, what those such as Morgan really wish us to understand is not that Dolezal is who and what she is no matter what she does, but that we are all born into fixed and fatal identities, regardless of what we learn, accomplish, or become in later life. And this would even include Barack Obama: he might be living in the White House and be the son of a white mother, but, according to those for whom race is an all-determining absolute, he remains a nigger for all eternity.     

In other words, racism begins and ends with a form of death sentence; the belief that colour is so much more than merely skin-deep and blackness entirely unrelated to artifice.