Clash of Representations: Posthuman versus Monster in Ivan I. Tverdovsky's 'Zoology'

• In Event: Posthumanism Today: Slavic Politics and Aesthetics of Questioning the Anthropocene

Abstract

The concept of the body and its representation are central to the symbolic structures of Ivan I. Tverdovsky's cinema. After examining the relationship between body and institution in Correction Class (2014), Tverdovsky introduced a discussion on the animalistic, human, and humane in Zoology (2016). Here, a seemingly unequivocal transformation of the main character's body—the appearance of the tail—triggers a chain of cultural codes and places the character at the crossroads of Darwinian evolution, witchcraft, visual representation, and digital media. The film shows an attempt to synthesize a new, posthuman female identity born out of exposure to animalistic projections and ''flickering signifiers'' (N. Katherine Hayles). At the same time, the search for a new mode of representation is fiercely contested by an external social force that, borrowing Julia Kristeva's term, ''abjectifies'' the protagonist through media and public opinion. In the end, the way in which the post-Soviet society of control alienates the non-conforming and reduces them to monsters reveals the ideological mechanisms that are generally problematized in the contemporary Russian auteur cinema.

Author

• Mikhail Itkin, U of Pittsburgh