The Captive Imagination

Inhumanity, Animality, and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 2

Author(s)

  • Devika Sharma Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9913

Abstract

Taking an outset in American artist Matthew Barney’s film Cremaster 2 (1999), which is a part of the expansive work The Cremaster Cycle, this essay asks how notions of captivity reflect upon our concepts of inhumanity and animality. Captivity and confinement are in themselves favored themes of the popular imagination, but Barney’s speculative film suggests that notions of captivity also form part of the framework through which we imagine aspects of inhumanity and animality. Discussing the film in the light of contemporary theoretical reflections on what is commonly termed “the question of the inhuman” and “the question of the animal,” respectively, I understand the film to be a visual engagement with captivity and its significance for the discourses, images, and institutions that govern the boundaries of the human.

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Author Biography

  • Devika Sharma

    Devika Sharma is assistant professor of Modern Culture at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Amerikanske fængselsbilleder: Kunst, kultur og indespærring i samtidens USA [American Prison Imagery: Arts, Culture, and Incarceration in the Contemporary U.S.] and the co-editor (with Frederik Tygstrup) of Structures of Feeling, a volume exploring the significance of affectivity for the study of culture (forthcoming, De Gruyter’s 2014). Currently, she is working on a monograph on contemporary humanitarian culture, focusing specifically on images of Africa as vital to a humanitarian feeling culture. 

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Published

2015-03-06

Issue

Section

Special Section: Animals and Technoculture

How to Cite

“The Captive Imagination: Inhumanity, Animality, and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 2”. 2015. Humanimalia 6 (2): 85-110. https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9913.