McLean David C. McLean

Becoming Beast McLean David C. McLean

This is the fifth volume in McLean's "poems for Emma" series. It is about how Emma helped him leave humanity behind & enter an intense animal state, a form of posthuman being, where posthumanism is seen similarly to how Lyotard sees postmodernism as prior to modernism, & in some ways a crisis state of modernism. As he usually does, McLean draws on another Lyotardian idea, that of intensity as presented in "Libidinal Economy", as well as Deleuze & Guattari's becoming-animal. It is an intensity prior to linguistic distinctions & a real becoming that produces no actual end state animal. The words "real" & "actual", as always, are used in this book with their philosophical rather than their everyday meanings. There is naturally a BDSM theme that recurs in this book, since it contains love poetry. There is a religious element too. The cover is designed by McLean using an image owned by Emma. "here is beast identity, whatever i am savage & real in me, not actual, not the product the actual animal, but identity being claw & fang absence & flesh us fuck forever, Emma, flesh us fuck forever"