Being Human Is an Occult Practice

Author: Magdalena Zurawski

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (2020)

In the essay Being Human Is an Occult Practice, Zurawski argues that studying and sharing literature can function as a means of enriching the impoverished definition of "human" created by capitalist social relations. Beginning with an analysis of Robert Duncan's description of the moment in his high school classroom when he finds himself called into a life in poetry, this essay explores the possibilities of the literature classroom at the very moment that it's being dismantled by the neoliberalization of our university systems. Zurawski argues that the literary holds a revitalizing potential precisely because of its capacity of exceeding the narrow imaginative aims of life within our contemporary social order.