Misanthropic Camp; or, What's So Queer About Misanthropy?

We are living in the “misanthropocene,” a term that playfully renames our current geological era as one characterized by a pervasive sense of despair with humanity. This essay asks what we might gain from embracing rather than denying our attachment to misanthropy as a queer response to the contemporary world. It asks what it means to be a half-hearted misanthrope: Can anything good come from shallow misanthropic gestures and the pleasures they seem to offer? Can this ambivalent misanthropy be productively harnessed to maintain optimism and hope for a better (and still human) future? Attention to the fun and frivolity of what is identified as misanthropic camp provides a way of grappling with our complicity and culpability in oppressive systems while not abandoning the human altogether. The essay considers three examples of misanthropic camp: drag queen Willow Pill's 2022 misanthropic anthem “I Hate People,” Joshua Clover and Juliana Spahr's 2014 poem #Misanthropocene: 24 Theses, and Rashaad Newsome's 2021 video work Build or Destroy.