A brief look at the idea of human exceptionalism, resonant with conspiratorial anxiety.
A critical assessment of the doom ostensibly advocated by the speculative and apocalyptic thinking of anti- and transhumanists.
According to Kirsch, a poet and literary critic, the continued existence of the human species is threatened by two contemporary strands of thought. One involves a radical faction of the Anthropocene crowd, which views human dominance over and exploitation of nature as an existential catastrophe in the making. For them, climate change requires the removal of humans through, for example, policies that drastically shrink human settlements to leave most of the Earth devoid of human habitation or that reduce the birth rate to zero. “The idea that we will destroy ourselves by despoiling the planet is…radically unsettling,” writes the author. “It means that humanity is endangered not only by our acknowledged vices, such as hatred and violence, but by pursuing aims that we ordinarily consider good and natural: prosperity, comfort, increase of our kind.” The other is a brand of transhumanism wedded to digital technologies able to generate “new forms of intelligent life,” thereby freeing post-humans of their material needs. Both strands assert that “the only way to restore the sovereignty of nature is for human civilization to collapse.” In essence, these thinkers “attack the very achievements that humanists cherish,” and their goal is “a world without us.” Alarmist in tone and selective in its reading of the literature—the author rightly includes Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, Michio Kaku, and Ray Kurzweil, but where is Bruno Latour’s canonical We Have Never Been Modern?—this short book takes scenarios that Kirsch admits are “necessarily speculative” and casts them as real forces having “the power to change the world.” The author fails to acknowledge that the central thrust of the Anthropocene argument is to imagine and bring about a better humanity (because it’s shared), not to engender a revolt against it. Acknowledging this, though, would cast further doubt on an already one-sided argument.
A brief look at the idea of human exceptionalism, resonant with conspiratorial anxiety.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-735-91376-6
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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