severing

is a foundational, traumatic fissure between reality (the human-correlated world) and the real (ecological symbiosis of human and nonhuman parts of the biosphere).

This itself is significant because “solidarity” cuts against a dominant ontological trend, default since the basic social, psychic and philosophical foreclosure of the human–nonhuman symbiotic real that we call the Neolithic. 13 Let’s think up a dramatic Game of Thrones–sounding name for it. Let’s call it “the Severing.” Why such a dramatic name? What the Severing names is a trauma that some humans persist in reenacting on and among ourselves (and obviously on and among other lifeforms). The Severing is a foundational, traumatic fissure between, to put it in stark Lacanian terms, reality (the human-correlated world) and the real (ecological symbiosis of human and nonhuman parts of the biosphere).

is wrapped up in the not in that play is merely a way to adjust to reality, so that eventually we can chuck away the teddy bear like Wittgenstein’s ladder.

We are supposed to get behind the idea that playing is a way to adjust to reality, so that eventually we can chuck away the teddy bear like Wittgenstein’s ladder. By the age of ten, we have already decided that literature should not be about talking toasters or friendly frogs. Such entities are at best labeled “transitional objects” that allow one to mature from play to reality, itself a telling opposition.18

is the stark line we draw between humans and non-human consciousness. Already by the age of ten, we have already decided that literature should not be about talking toasters or friendly frogs.

is a catastrophic trauma that does not take place “at” a certain “point” in linear time, but a wave that ripples out in many dimensions, in whose wake we are caught.

The Severing is a catastrophe: an event that does not take place “at” a certain “point” in linear time, but a wave that ripples out in many dimensions, in whose wake we are caught. We are caught in the Oxygen Catastrophe that began over three billion years ago, the ecological crisis created by bacteria excreting oxygen, which is why you can breathe as you read this sentence. The Oxygen Catastrophe is happening now. In the same way, the Severing is happening now.

is a traumatic distinction between human–nonhuman relations that hides in very plain sight everywhere in post-agricultural psychic, social and philosophical space.

Hiding in very plain sight, everywhere in post-agricultural psychic, social and philosophical space, is evidence of a traumatic Severing of human–nonhuman relations.

is reflective of a world drastically depleted, a desert landscape.

The world of the perpetrator of trauma is drastically depleted. The Severer experiences what one psychoanalyst describes as a desert landscape—a telling image from the overkill intensity of the logistics of post-Neolithic agriculture.21

severing, n.Definitions

severing