abhuman

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not in OED but scores of GB hits:


1997 _Australasian Victorian Studies Journal_ III 47 [GB: not verified in
print]: [Kelly Hurley's] organising principle for her investigations of
these texts is "the abhuman," a term she borrows from the horror writer
William Hope Hodgson to denote the possibilities of "the ruination of
traditional constructs of human identity."

2000 Michelle A. Masse' in David Punter, ed. _A Companion to the Gothic_
(Oxford: Blackwell) 240: By foregrounding the loss of all boundaries, or
dissolution into the abhuman, Hurley addresses issues of race and
masculinity in the Gothic that evidence themselves as 'hysterical nausea.'

It sort of means "no longer fully, significantly, or recognizably human."

JL



' --
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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