Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror: From Monstrous Births to the Birth of the Monster

209 Pages·2020·0.906 MB·English

by  Sunny Hawkins

Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror
ii
Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror
From Monstrous Births to the Birth of the Monster
Sunny Hawkins
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of
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First published in the United States of America 2020
Copyright © Sunny Hawkins, 2020
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. vii constitute an extension
of this copyright page.
Cover design by Louise Dugdale
Cover image: Still from Ex Machina (2014) © Mary Evans/AF Archive/Film4
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hawkins, Sunny, 1979- author.
Title: Deleuze and the gynesis of horror: from monstrous births to the
birth of the monster / Sunny Hawkins.
Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Includes
bibliographical references, filmography, and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013012 | ISBN 9781501358456 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781501358432 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501358449 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995. | Horror films–History and
criticism. | Motherhood in motion pictures. | Mothers in motion pictures. |
Monsters in motion pictures. | Feminism and motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.H6 H39 2020 | DDC 791.43/6164–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013012
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-5845-6
ePDF: 978-1-5013-5843-2
eBook: 978-1-5013-5844-9
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Essential Motherhood and Egalitarian Feminism: The Conundrum of
Sexual Difference 3
Beyond the Binary: Opening up the Body without Organs 11
Schizosophy of the Monstrous 19
1 Mother, (m)Other 27
Transcendental Empiricism: Deleuze’s Cinematic Philosophy 29
The “Volatile Body” in Schizoanalysis 35
Pure Difference and the Post-human Family 45
2 Mother (of) Monsters 55
Becoming the Monstrous-Feminine 60
Last (wo)Man Standing, or The Final Girl in Schizoanalysis 69
Molar Beings, Molecular Becomings, and the Putting into Discourse
of “Woman” 72
3 Meet Your Makers 79
Becoming-Woman: The “Universal Girl” and the Ever-Shrinking Man 79
Escaping (or Not) the Binary Machine 85
Law of the Father versus the Law of the Jungle 91
The Psychomechanics of Becoming-Monster 97
4 It’s a Monster (Baby) 111
The Blood Is Gives Life: Evolution in Underworld 113
Prey Becomes Predator: Molecular Ruptures in Twilight’s
Hegemonic Narrative 122
The Post-human Resistance 135
5 The Post-human Family 141
Queering Creation 144
The Spiral of Time 150
vi Contents
Family as Survivor Assemblage 157
Molecular Motherhood, or the Monstrous Body (Re)imagined 169
Notes 183
References 187
Films 190
Index 191
Acknowledgments
The enthusiasm of my students for exploring gender in the horror film was what
inspired me to undertake this project. I would like to thank Rocky Colavito and
the faculty members of our Horror Living and Learning Community at Butler
University for encouraging me to pursue this idea. An early version of Chapter 2
was presented at the Popular Culture Association Conference in 2018, and
the excitement with which it was received persuaded me that a book applying
Deleuzian theories to analysis of gender in film might well be called for.
Special thanks to the instructors and colleagues who have supported and
encouraged me over the years, most of all my dear friend Amy Montz, who has
spent the last decade fearlessly climbing writing mountains alongside me; David
Blakesley, who inspired me to return to the horror films I had long feared with
an amazing undergraduate course in the rhetoric of film; Elizabeth Klaver, who
introduced me to gender theory way back when; and finally to Ann Hall, who
generously provided feedback on a draft of this manuscript. To Katie Gallof,
who championed this project from the first, and the entire team at Bloomsbury
Academic, thank you for helping make this a much better book.
Without the love, support, and encouragement of my partner Brandon, this
project would never have been completed. I have him and my grandparents R. L.
and Carol Parrott to thank for teaching me what family is for.
viii
Introduction
Motherhood.
For each of us, that word conjures different images: our own mothers,
perhaps, or the women or men who “mothered” us when we were children.
Perhaps we picture our best friend with her three children, or our wives holding
our newborn infants. Perhaps we picture our mothers with their mothers, in the
kitchen, cooking a holiday meal.
A Google Image search for mother returns endless images of (mostly
white, able-bodied, middle-class, presumably heterosexual) women cuddling
perfectly coiffed infants in immaculate nurseries or reading books to sleepy
little angels under trees in flowering meadows. My twenty-, thirty-, and forty-
something friends’ Instagrams depict moms and toddlers proudly displaying
finger-paint-stained hands, moms beaming beside daughters and sons dressed
for school dances, moms eating ice cream with Girl Scouts and Little Leaguers.
Whether authentic, staged, or curated, what these images reveal is that, as
Nancy Chodorow has said, we have a cultural idea of motherhood, and whether
that idea(l) matches up with the reality of our lived experiences, the ideal is still
powerful. It shapes public opinion and public policy. It defines the standard
“good” mothers must strive for. And it stands uncomfortably alongside our
idea(l)s of what it means to be a woman. For a mother, after all, is not just an
idea. She is also a body.
A woman’s body.
This is a book about horror film. Specifically, it is a book about the
maternal in horror film, one which engages a radically alternative perspective
to the commonly practiced psychoanalytic lens of feminist film analysis. In
so doing—in demonstrating within horror film feminist concepts such as
Moira Gatens’s imaginary body, Elizabeth Grosz’s volatile body, and Rosi
Braidotti’s monstrous body, all ideas drawn from the “schizoid” philosophy
of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari—this book aims to radicalize how
difference is conceived in both feminism and film analysis. If this book