To the nonacademic ear, the word “discourse” may sound like jargon. Yet its meaning is crucial for society because of the snug connection between authoritative discourse and power relations. Discourse plays a crucial role in entrenching and reproducing power relations by shaping collective consciousness and by steering human behavior in consequential ways.
Everything the human is, the human has received from nature beginning with the biological ingredients forming our bodies.
The human food system is the main physical driver of life’s devastation. For starters, this is because of food production’s scope. Agriculture occupies 40 percent of the planet’s ice-free land, and continues to gobble up territory; it consumes some 80 percent of the freshwater people take; and it contributes heftily to greenhouse emissions. Yet this is the tip of the iceberg.
When I was a kid, I used to play a mind game. I would try to imagine that there was only nothing: the negation of existence. After trying to feel into this for a while, it would push me into a state of experiencing “the uncanny.”
The othering of animals marks a watershed in the invention of “the human” qua superior, entitled, and invested with absolute power over nonhumans. Human supremacy did not so much need to pit itself against trees, rivers, or mushrooms. Above all, it needed to define itself against the nonhumans who have faces and voices. It had to raise the human above the animal realm, which also required pushing animals down.