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).

Jacqueline Murray, ed. Patriarchy, Honour, and Violence: Masculinities in Premodern Europe. Un article de la revue Quaderni d'Italianistica (Critical Posthumanism in Italian Cinema and Media) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Establishing an ecology of Italian horror by looking at Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood (1971) and Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985)—both of which feature insects’ first-“person” perspective shots, this paper traces the formation and subsequent development of a gaze in these films, one that disrupts the understanding of this gaze as human. From thematic concerns like ecology, entomology, and an emphasis on an anti-anthropomorphic gaze, we can begin to trace a resonance between the two films and their desire to expand vision. Examining early articulations of a posthumanist sensibility and vision in these films, this paper surveys the complex entanglements between Italian formulations of horror and violence, proposing the concept of an ‘insect gaze’ as a mediated gaze before exploring the terror, and possibilities, it engenders. Separated by more than a decade, the films present non-human gazes that trigger deep-seated anxieties specific to their historical context.

Adrienne Ward and Irene Zanini-Cordi. Courting Celebrity: The Autobiographies of Angela Veronese and Teresa Bandettini. Un article de la revue Quaderni d'Italianistica (Critical Posthumanism in Italian Cinema and Media) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Andrea Faoro. I Consumati. La storia vera di una famiglia del Seicento tra affari, intrighi e monacazioni forzate. Un article de la revue Quaderni d'Italianistica (Critical Posthumanism in Italian Cinema and Media) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.