Résumés
Abstract
This essay considers the posthuman and ecological tensions pervading the respective filmographies of Matteo Garrone and David Cronenberg. Taking our cue from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal, we investigate the recurring motifs and philosophical concerns that emerge from particular filmic ecologies and the characters inhabiting them. By displaying figures that appear dominated by fluxes of desires and passions they neither control nor manage through self-reflection and detached awareness, Garrone’s and Cronenberg’s cinemas challenge any image of rationality ostensibly embedded in the human. The encounters with the material and technological world that surround the individuality of characters do not necessarily define affirmative processes of becoming, but they do help us understand the dynamic nature of subjectivity and the always surprising possibilities for de-subjectivation and creative re-subjectivation. Here we focus on four works: Garrone’s The Embalmer (2002) and Dogman (2018), and Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) and Crash (1996).
Keywords:
- Cyborgs,
- Ecological Assemblages,
- Desire,
- Gilles Deleuze,
- Félix Guattari,
- Posthumanism,
- Film-Ecologies,
- Process-Ontology
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Arthurs, Jane. “Crash: Beyond the Boundaries of Sense.” In Crash Cultures: Modernity, Mediation and the Material. Edited by Jane Arthurs and Iain Grant, Intellect Books, 2000, pp. 63–77.
- Benasayag, Miguel, and Bastien Cany. Il ritorno dall’esilio: Ripensare il senso comune. Translated by Elenora Messana, Vita e Pensiero, 2022.
- Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity, 2013.
- Braidotti, Rosi. “Posthuman Neomaterialism and Affirmation.” In From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence. Edited by Christine Daigle and Terrance H. McDonald, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 23–40.
- Carlorosi, Silvia. A Grammar of Cinepoiesis: Poetic Cameras of Italian Cinema. Lexington Books, 2015.
- Chaudhuri, Shohini. “Witnessing Death: Ballard’s and Cronenberg’s Crash.” Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture & Politics, vol. 14, no. 1, 2001, pp. 63–75, https://doi.org/10.1080/10402130120042361.
- Cozzi, Emilio. “La Forma è Sostanza: Intervista a Matteo Garrone.” Cineforum, vol. 475, June 2008, pp. 14–17.
- Crash. Directed by David Cronenberg, Alliance Communications, 1996.
- Creed, Barbara. “The Crash Debate: Anal Wounds, Metallic Kisses.” Screen, vol. 39, no. 2, summer 1998, pp. 175–79, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/39.2.175.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, U of Minnesota P, 1986.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton, Columbia UP, 1994.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Translated by Martin Joughin, Zone Books, 1992.
- Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan, U of Minnesota P, 2003.
- Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi, U of Minnesota P, 2005.
- Devlin, William J., and Angel M. Cooper. “The Absurdity of Human Existence: ‘The Metamorphosis’ and The Fly.” In Mediamorphosis: Kafka and the Moving Image. Edited by Shai Biderman and Ido Lewit, Columbia UP, 2016, pp. 236–57, https://doi.org/10.7312/bide17644-015.
- Dogman. Directed by Matteo Garrone, Archimede Film, 2018.
- The Embalmer. Directed by Matteo Garrone, Fandango, 2002.
- Fleming, David H. “Becoming-Squid, Becoming-Insect and the Refrain of/from Becoming-Imperceptible in Contemporary Science Fiction.” In From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence. Edited by Christine Daigle and Terrance H. McDonald, Bloomsbury, 2022, pp. 188–208.
- The Fly. Directed by David Cronenberg, Brooksfilm, 1986.
- Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by James Strachey, W. W. Norton & Company, 1961.
- Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s.” In Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader. Edited by Sean Redmond, Columbia UP, 2007, pp. 158–81, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/redm336488.25.
- Kristeva, Julia. Powers of horror: an essay on abjection. Columbia UP, 1982.
- Marini, Alessandro. “Matteo Garrone’s Primo Amore and the Feeling of Suffering: Between Sickness, a Search for Meaning and Formal Control.” Forum Italicum, vol. 52, no. 3, 2018, pp. 844–58, https://doi.org/10.1177/0014585818781879.
- Mathijs, Ernest. “AIDS References in the Critical Reception of David Cronenberg: ‘It May Not Be Such a Bad Disease after All.’” Cinema Journal, vol. 42, no. 4, summer 2003, pp. 29–45, https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2003.0019.
- Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso, 2015.
- Pell, Gregory. “Matteo Garrone’s High Art of Low Culture.” Italica, vol. 88, no. 2, summer 2011, pp. 262–85, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23070838.
- Santoli, S. “Dogman—Matteo Garrone: L’uomo cane.” Cineforum, vol. 58, no. 6, 2018, p. 9.
- Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. U of Minnesota P, 1993.
- Spielrein, Sabina. The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein: Pioneer of Psychoanalysis. Edited and translated by Ruth I. Cape and Raymond Burt, Routledge, 2018, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429470103.
- Spinoza, Baruch. Spinoza: The Complete Works. Edited by Michael L. Morgan, translated by Samuel Shirley, Hackett Publishing Company, 2002.
- Sticchi, Francesco. “Fra condizione postuma e mappe di nuovi mondi.” Il Tascabile, 27 July 2022, https://www.iltascabile.com/linguaggi/crimes-future-cronenberg-martone.
- Tale of Tales. Directed by Matteo Garrone, Italy, France and UK, Archimede Film, 2015.
- Vaccari, Andrés. “La idea más peligrosa del mundo: Hacia una crítica de la antropología transhumanista.” Tecnología & Sociedad, vol. 1, no. 2, 2013, pp. 39–59.
- Wernick, Andrew. “Vehicles for Myth: The Shifting Image of the Modern Car.” In Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. Edited by Ian Angus and Sut Jhally, Routledge, 1989, pp. 198–216, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003326427-18.

