The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human

The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human defines, conceptualizes, and evaluates the insectile—pertaining to an entomological fascination—in relation to subject formation. The book is driven by a central dynamic between form and formlessness, further staging an investigation of the phenomenon of fascination using Lacanian psychoanalysis, suggesting that the psychodrama of subject formation plays itself out entomologically. The book’s engagement with the insectile—its enactments, cultural dreamwork, fantasy transformations—‘in-forming’ the so-called human subject undertakes a broader deconstruction of said subject and demonstrates the foundational but occluded role of the insectile in subject formation. It tracks the insectile across the archives of psychoanalysis, seventeenth century still life painting, novels from the nineteenth century to the present day, and post-1970s film. The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human will be of interest for scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates in film studies, visual culture, popular culture, cultural and literary studies, comparative literature, and critical theory, offering the insectile as new category for theoretical thought.

Introduction: Insectile Subjectile Form Homme-Insecte: Form, Typus, Fetish The Insectile Informe: H.P. Lovecraft and the Deliquescence of Form Hotel-Daddy-Wasp-Machine Informe Othered Form and Insectile Subjectile: Under the Skin Relations of the Third Kind Still Life as Extinction Event Coda: Wolfman, Vienna, Larva Bibliography Index

Fabienne Collignon is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research interests are critical theory, in particular theories of technology, subject formation, the ‘in-human’. She has published articles in Textual Practice, C-Theory, Journal of American Studies, Orbit, Configurations, New Formations. Her first monograph, Rocket States: Atomic Weaponry and the Cultural Imagination, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014 and maps the technological unconscious of the Cold War. From September 2018 to February 2020, she was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Universität zu Köln, during which time she researched scenes of the insectile.