Transcorporeal becoming: the temporalities of Searles and the nonhuman

As critical theories center on co-emergent interspecies relationalities, psychoanalysis continues to reproduce a fantasy of narcissistic omnipotence and exceptionalism. But theories of interspecies becoming have failed to adequately address human ambivalence and conflicts of interest that are inherent in their ideals of dispersive agencies and unfolding potentialities/uncertainties. There is still a need for a theory of subjectivity that can explore the ongoing processes of human disavowals and dissociations that reify the human exceptionalism motivating planetary destruction. Psychoanalysis remains one of the only theories of subjectivity that creates space for ambivalence, conflict, and unconscious motivations. This paper melds psychoanalytic theories of the non-human with critical and indigenous theories of interspecies emergence, to create a space where dispersive agencies, unconscious ambivalences, and the potentialities of multiple temporalities can be held.