Home

No items found.

By employing Deleuzian conceptualizations of “desire,” “deterritorialization,” and“doubling,”1 this study examines Avatar (James Cameron’s 2009 film) as a hybridity ofbecoming the Other. I will sketch the contours of an oppositional politics within the figure ofEmpire (or the American capitalist empire which is almost always transcendental). The binarystructure of the movie oscillates between two utterly opposing modalities (deploying high-techmilitary force against eco-friendly indigenous culture, weapons against trees, killing to healing,earth to space, human to nonhuman-nature, white skin against blue skin, etc.) This dualistictension seems to create a Neo-Platonic Augustinian confrontation between Good and Evil.Nevertheless, the Avatar’s ambivalent body provides us with a post-human fable of becomingwith an eco-theological edge.

https://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=phil_facpub

Avatar (2009)