Otherkin News

Trigger warnings: For this article, none.


2013: Jay Johnston, senior lecturer of the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, published a chapter about otherkin in a book. The book, Animal Death, is an academic non-fiction book about animal rights and the relations between humans and animals. The chapter is titled "On having a furry soul: Transpecies identity and ontological indeterminacy in Otherkin subcultures."

Johnston cites one source on otherkin for this chapter. It's Lupa’s book from 2007, A Field Guide to Otherkin. (Note that as of last April, Lupa no longer identifies as a therianthrope, and took the Field Guide out of print to get away from the subject.) Johnston focuses on people who identify as animals (therianthropes) (Johnston, p. 295). Because Johnston’s source is the Field Guide, Johnston repeats Lupa's system of categorizing therianthropes as a type of otherkin. (Judging by my research, this categorization is technically correct or at least satisfactory in some uses, but otherwise socially and historically incorrect.)

Johnston "questions the usefulness of distinguishing between 'animal' and 'human' for individuals who understand themselves as simultaneously both" (Johnston, p. xix). Johnston examines excerpts from the Field Guide regarding therianthropy in context with ideas from the philosopher Derrida.

Portions of Johnston’s article are visible via Google Books.



Sources

Jay Johnston, "On having a furry soul: Transpecies identity and ontological indeterminacy in Otherkin subcultures." In Jay Johnston and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, eds., Animal Death (Sydney: Sydney University Press), p. 293-306.

Lupa, "Letting go of therianthropy for good." 2013-04-02. Therioshamanism. http://therioshamanism.com/2013/04/02/letting-go-of-therianthropy-for-good/

Trigger warnings for this article: none that I can think of. Work-safe.

The Sydney Morning Herald (est. 1831) recently ran an article¹ about the vampire subculture’s presence on the Internet, mentioning otherkin as well. “Researcher Danielle Kirby used the ‘Otherkin’, who meet in an online forum and believe they are partially or entirely non-human, to examine the phenomenon. In her paper, she found about 800 members of the Otherkin network, including those who identified as dragons, elves, vampires, fairies and angels. The internet had helped concentrate their underlying broadly neo-pagan beliefs, she said.” This probably refers to Kirby’s essay “Alternative Worlds: Metaphysical Questing and Community amongst the Otherkin” in the anthology Through A Glass Darkly: Reflections on the Sacred.²

- O. Scribner

( Sources )