The Inhuman and the Arch-Human: The Interior of the Body in the Work of David Cronenberg

Klaudia Rachubińska

Abstract

Borderline is the guiding metaphor in David Cronenberg’s work. In his films the director operates on the border between the inside and the outside, between what is familiar and alien, human and inhuman. Using the ideas of psychoanalysis of culture, post-humanism and the third wave feminist thought, the author analyses the meaning of these borders, and in particular of the permeable bodies of Cronenberg’s protagonists, which appear to unite rather than separate the interior and the exterior. The analysis focuses on the The Fly - a reflection on the interior of the body, its transformations and disintegration, on searching for one’s identity and the transformation of subjectivity, on the confrontation with the alien and the unknown: in physicality and sexuality, science and technology, illness and death. The author points out the meaning of the instability of the boundaries of the body, identity and humanity, their vulnerability to interference, sometimes leading to a blurring of the borders of the reality itself.