Abstract:
< p>This talk will focus on the complex interplay of the monstrous and the po sthuman in cinematic depictions of cyborg entities. The point of departure will be a comparison between Shinya Tsukamoto’s cult film “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (1989) and\, as a rather different canonical example\, Stanl ey Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lo ve the Bomb” (1964).Although cyborg studies and (grotesque) mon ster studies both theorize posthuman entities\, there are few attempts of c ombining the concepts as an analytical tool for filmic images of the posthu man. The analysis will show how in both films the grotesque and monstrous a re constituents for the depiction of the posthuman cyborg and how this nece ssarily leads to the blurring of the analytical categories of “character” a nd “filmic diegetic thingness.”
This blurring (which is explicitly no t a hybridization) poses the question of a new posthuman focus of film stud ies\, which takes depictions of non-human agency into account and\, borrowi ng from Latour’s symmetrical sociology\, calls for a reconsideration of the role of things in film. Following this idea\, it is possible to reconsider both\, “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” and “Dr. Strangelove” as s lapstick films\, a genre that is a prime example for depictions of the enta nglement of human and non-human agency.
Bio:
Leon Kraft holds a Bachelors Degree in German S
tudies and Art History / Historical Image Studies from Bielefeld University
. Currently he is studying in the Master Program Media Studies at Bauhaus-U
niversity Weimar. His scientific interests focus on the history of cultural
techniques\, infrastructures\, alternatives to anthropocentric thinking an
d the theory of the grotesque.