I am absolutely buffaloed by Laura Brown's book, The Counterhuman Imaginary (Cornell UP, 2023).
The title is a puzzle. Why does the adjective come after the noun? And what does the word "counterhuman" mean? (One hundred and forty-six pages to go and I'm already off balance. I'm worried that if I can't understand the title I'm going to have a heck of a difficult time with the content.)
I took a guess that the coinage "counterhuman" would signify something monstrous or terrifying, like a vampire, troll or ogre. But I was not even in the ballpark. "Counterhuman," I have now discovered, is a term of art in contemporary literary criticism that refers to everything that is not human: not only animals, natural phenomena such as storms and earthquakes, but also "things" or objects -- anything that is constructed or manufactured. Not "inhuman' -- just not human. (But why "counter" rather than "non" human?)
Moreover, the word "imaginary," which I have for a lifetime understood to be an adjective signifying what is not material but rather a product of the human mind, as for example, art and literature and dreams, has also undergone metamorphosis. According to wiki, the adjective-turned-noun "imaginary" "is the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols common to a particular social group and the corresponding society through which people imagine their social whole.” That's a deal of territory, but I think I understand: "imaginary" is essentially a synonym for what I might, naively, have called "culture." (Might an alternative to The Counterhuman Imaginary be The Culture of Things? It's a more inviting title and much less pretentious.)
But now I'm stopped in my tracks. The "imaginary, it appears, is "the work of a particular social group." How in the world, then, do the "counterhuman," who are incapable of thought, possibly generate "a structure of ideas?" Pots and pans and volcanoes and marmosets don't have brains that think or speak, except when we humans attribute such traits to them.
In a whimsical moment, Duke Senior, in As You Like It, proposed that there are "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones." Am I to understand that this author takes seriously what Shakespeare regarded as an ironic jokey extravagance? Gosh, I hope not.
I think I now get the point: Laura Brown, the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University, intends to defend a paradox. She will explain to me how non-humans, things without an intelligence, can create a culture. I'd better pay close attention. Or perhaps the author means to advance the trivial but more sensible and less sensational idea that humans can attribute culture to animals and things.
Nevertheless, I must say what's on my mind -- what a deliberately off-putting title. It's clearly designed to repel the general reader, someone like myself, and to speak only to coterie fellow-travelers who might understand either or both of the words "counterhuman" and "imaginary." Not a large potential audience.
Do I have a chip on my shoulder as I turn from the title to the Introduction. Yes, I believe I do.
[January 25] Marianne Morrison, Ph.D. writes: "Vivian, you should not go on with this. You're so prejudiced against this writer that you can't give her a fair hearing."
[January 25] Vivian de St. Vrain responds: "Marianne, I'm trying my best to be fair and honest."
[January 26] Petal Rivera writes: "Vivian, I think you're naive to suggest a less pretentious title. I hate to say it, but the point is not to avoid pretense, but to be pretentious. No modesty in this book."
[January 27] J C Occhiogrosso writes: "Vivian, you're being deliberately obtuse. C'mon, it's not so difficult."
[February 4] Vivian de St. Vrain responds: "Ok, J C, if it's so easy, why don't you suggest a better title."
[February 12] Winifred A. Walker writes: "Like it or not, this is typical academic jargon. If you want to read this book, you must master the idiom."]
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