Eugene Thacker

The end of the old flesh: beastly bodily becomings as contemporary parable

by JD Taylor

Presented at "The End of..." Conference, University of Kent, 22 January 2012.

In 1981 Gilles Deleuze read in Francis Bacon's paintings a 'zone of the indiscernible' between man and animal. Bacon's... more In 1981 Gilles Deleuze read in Francis Bacon's paintings a 'zone of the indiscernible' between man and animal. Bacon's figures spasm through their wounded architectures, screams erupting as destabilised bodies attempt to escape their figurations. This paper develops this zone of the indiscernible to explore how human flesh has become a medium for representations of the end. In David Cronenberg's Videodrome [1983], a dark psychological conspiracy places the flesh under suspicion of suggestible media-corruption, as Max Renn transcends to abstracted data by orgiastically abandoning the old flesh.

Against the knowing futurism of Videodrome, this paper compares Charles Burns' Black Hole comic-book series [1995-2005], which uses the grotesque contagious corruption of teenage flesh as a dark analogy for growing up and loss of innocence in the haunted spaces of late 20th century  Americana. Overtly Freudian, the rich contrasts of Burns' work introduces the becoming-monstrous and the eruption of contagion which racks modern American anxieties about the ending of the human, most familiar in recent zombie narratives. Taking a parallel track, in both accounts beastly becomings are played out on the flesh to mark internal turmoil whilst offering two directions for a contemporary bestiary of our culture. Whilst Burns offers a pessimistic Quietism and submission to the mysterious disease, Cronenberg's narrative alternatively calls to end the old flesh and embrace the possibilities of cybertechnology. Baudrillardian pessimism is spliced with 'biopunk' subcultures alongside Eugene Thacker's theoretical forays into life as the 'unthinkable' (2010, 2011) to finally ascertain why anxieties over life, technology and the end continue to play on a corrupted flesh. Does power embody itself through a zombified life, or will the skin continue to subvert and revolt against human (and posthuman) machinations?