ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the technical aspect of Otherkin becoming – the way in which the encounter with technicity, understood as the medium of the internet, allows the emergence of forms of intimacy both with and within media that translate into alternative ontologies. The ontological destabilisation at the core of Otherkin identity has already been analysed by Jay Johnston, who argues that Otherkin subjectivity is based on the 'demise of the "human" and "animal" as ontologically distinct categories'. Otherkin are one node in a vast network of human-media intimacies that spans the entire non-linear history of humanity. The intimate connectivities among Otherkin take shape both through the medium of the internet and with the internet. The non-humanity of Otherkin is essentially an embrace of the other in its animalistic and mythopoetic forms. Otherkin showcase digital media's potential for the creation of new ethical and political possibilities through their sustained attack on accepted notions of what it means to be human.
