PRODUCTIVE POSSESSIONS

Abstract:

In this essay I begin with Foucault's theorization of the convulsive body of the possessed as a site of struggle. Next, I amend this perspective with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion that “the concept is not object but territory” (What is Philosophy? (New York: Verso, 2003) 101). That is, rather than looking at convulsive bodies as objects through which actors (another form of object) struggle, I approach convulsions as evidencing acts of territorialization. Instead of a corporeal object over which actors struggle for ownership, this perspective reframes convulsions as a process of space-making that is constitutive of the space-makers. Amending Foucault's take on convulsions with Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory allows for analysis of “techno-horror” popular entertainments as constitutive processes in the unfolding of new reproductive masculine subjectivities.

Keywords:

• Foucault
• Deleuze
• Guattari
• territory
• possession
• convulsion
• horror
• masculinity
• technology

Notes

1 Sunlen Miller, “Birth-Control Hearing was ‘Like Stepping into a Time Machine,’” “The Note,” ABC News 17 Feb. 2012. Web (accessed 10 Sept. 2012); “Faced with Birth Control Mandate, Local Catholics Say Religious Freedom is at Stake,” Huffington Post 29 Mar. 2012. Web (accessed 10 Sept. 2012).

2 See <http://www.sodahead.com/living/homosexuals-are-possessed-by-demons/question-869849/?&link=ibaf&q=&esrc=s> (accessed 19 Jan. 2015) or enter the phrase “Homosexuals are possessed by demons” into a web search engine.

3 jddun411, “The Power of Christ Compels Him,” 411mania 29 June 2008, available <http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/79029/The-Power-of-Christ-Compels-Him.htm> (accessed 27 Jan. 2015).

4 See Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007); Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: U of California P, 2003); Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 2002); Judith Lorber, “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology” in The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, Behaviour, ed. Rose Weitz (New York: Oxford UP, 1998) 12–24; Deborah Orr, “Thinking through the Body: An Introduction” in Belief, Bodies, and Being: Feminist Reflections on Embodiment, eds. Deborah Orr, Linda López McAlister, Eileen Kahl, and Kathleen Earle (Lanham, MD: Rowman, 2006) 1–10; Haraway.

5 See also Colette Balmain, Introduction to Japanese Horror Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2008); Julie Clarke, The Paradox of the Posthuman: Science Fiction/Techno-Horror Films and Visual Media (Düsseldorf: VDM, 2009); Daniel Dinello, Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology (Austin: U of Texas P, 2006); James Egan, “Technohorror: The Dystopian Vision of Stephen King,” Extrapolation 29.2 (1988): 140–52.

6 I am not limiting myself to a particular nationality of film, as the notion of welding a media text to a particular geo-national region is often misleading, if not always untenable. (See Miller et al.) Similarly, Wise's work on spatial and cultural fluidity acknowledges that connections to geography are produced, not natural. Yet we must grapple with culture as something real and an object of study. Rather than culture flowing from a point of origin we should examine instead cultural territorializations across the globe.

7 See Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000); Simon; Allen Weiss, Phantasmic Radio (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995); Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford UP, 1988); Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (New York: Random, 1999).