Post-anthropocentrism

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 explores how posthuman cinema turns to the animal to dismantle anthropocentric understandings of “the human.” The chapter begins by interpreting contemporary surrealist films, The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015), Gräns/Border (Ali Abbasi, 2018), and Teströl és lélekröl/On Body and Soul (Ildikó Enyedi, 2017), as subversive cogs in what Giorgio Agamben terms the “anthropological machine.” These films deploy surrealist devices to mirror back to humanity not its distinction from other animals, but its spiritual coexistence and interdependence with them. The chapter then turns to examine how two Thai films—Kraben Rahu/Manta Ray (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, 2019) and Satpralat/Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)—further highlight the post-anthropocentric ends of contemporary posthuman cinema. Read through a framework of “new animism,” the conceptual, narrative, and formal aspects of these films offer another lens to challenge both anthropocentric worldviews and the idea of cinema as inherently realist. Whether operating in surrealist or new animist modes, these global post-anthropocentric films work toward the shared aims of critical posthumanism and critical animal studies: breaking down binary oppositions; resisting the tendency to reduce animals to the status of metaphors and mirrors to the human; and offering a sensory exploration of the blurred borders between human and nonhuman animals.