'Animals Continue to Gather': Animality and the Desubjectification of Feminine Desire in Jennifer's Body

Abstract

This article examines the depiction of interspecies kinship in the 2009 queer horror-comedy film Jennifer's Body through analysis of the 2007 film script. The article centers on scenes of women and various species of non-human animals gathering to form an ‘interspecies pack’. Through these scenes, Jennifer's Body taps into a significant history of cultural association between feminine desire and interspecies kinship. From the maenads of ancient Greece to the witches of early-modern Europe, to the Disney princesses of the USA, the interspecies pack functions as a powerful evocation of feminine desire within the dominant Western imaginary. This analysis aims to develop frameworks for reading depictions of kinship between women and non-human animals outside the interpretive confines of analogy. This work thereby attends to Patricia MacCormack's ethical injunction to feminist analysis to think ‘the animal’ beyond its use as anthropomorphic representation (2005). The article takes Barbara Creed's psychoanalysis of ‘the monstrous-feminine' as a point of departure and utilizes Deleuze and Guattari's theorization of the pack (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, 26-38; 239-250). The interspecies pack is read as a model for desire that decenters the human(ist) subject. The depiction of women as participants within interspecies packs therefore opens up liberatory possibilities for encountering feminine desire outside its representation as the desire of a human subject. To examine how participation within the interspecies pack decomposes the human(ist) subject, this article focuses on three ways the pack functions. Firstly, as the production of (interspecies and queer) relations outside of naturalized kinship structures. Secondly, as the presence of desire outside of human subjectivity. Thirdly, as the envelopment of the human subject within a metamorphic, fluid dimension of matter that cuts across species.