‘Mimic the strata’ or what is becoming about becoming – "The Thing"

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The article presents a post-humanist reading of John Carpenter’s "The Thing" (1982). At 40, the second adaptation of John Campbell’s Jr novella "Who Goes There?" (1938) has recently undergone a revival of critical interest. However, this interest has only elicited – to date – new iterations of the traditional paradigm of ideological readings of the film. This article attempts to read "The Thing" outside the paradigm of ideology and human(ist) subjectivity, as per the formulation of Louis Althusser (2014), as well as to critique such paradigm. First, the article offers an analysis of the ideological components at work in various traditional readings of the film. Then it scrutinizes ways in which these traditional readings can be overcome. This opens the possibility of a post-humanist interpretation of the film, an interpretation in which the Thing is not just a manifestation of otherness, but a material and effective realization of life seen from a non-humanist perspective. This reading arises after dispensing with the subject–object relationship enforced in Althusser’s ideological structures. Outside these structures, the article then ponders on the materiality of the Thing through Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs (‘BwO’), which envisages the body as a material dimension for the flow of becoming, a dynamic force field free of fixed and normative pre-conceptions. Finally, the article explores the new sources of horror in the film, as well as the ethico-political implications this analysis brings to fore.