2018 — Critical Essay

What is Xenofeminism?

Macon Holt

Ark Books

Where previously manifestos such as the famous one by Marx and Engels warned of the alienation to come as it was already emerging in the newly industrialised countries of Europe, and declared an injunction to avoid and overcome it, LC’s XF has emerged in a world where forms of alienation have proliferated and saturated the world. And asks, in regards to alienation, “have we ever been otherwise?” If not, could it not be the case that some sort of alienation gives structure to whatever it is that we are. Whatever the “we” is that is capable of reading and writing this text is already alienated from the kind of immediacy of existence experienced by creatures without language. And is it not through the alienation of system such as language and reason that we have been able to develop into a culture that at once produces further alienating structures like capitalism and gender but also produces their critique? Is it not through technologies, such as antibiotics, acting upon bodies that so many of us have been able to live so long that to keep reading we need to modify our eyes with the technology of crafted lenses and lasers. Is such a creature not already alien?  Maybe then some forms of alienation are not all bad. Maybe it will be further alienation that will free us from whatever unjust forms of culturated nature have burdened us with patriarchy. If this is the case, XF is then bold enough to ask the follow-up question, what can we do if we were to embrace our alienation and proliferate it further? Can this be how we attain emancipation?