Tenability of Colonial Moulds in the Posthuman Body: A Study of the Grotesque in Stevenson vis-à-vis Avant-Garde Cinema

Abstract

Body is a site where colonial discourse critiques itself. In the backdrop of the innumerable human lives lost owing to the current pandemic, the concept of the body needs further exploration. Reading a text in the light of this shift is significant for postcolonial theory as the concept of ‘boundary’ between the human and the non-human is problematized by a new dialogue between anthropocentrism and the centrality of machines. The paper aims to
highlight, with analogies from experimental cinema, how the idea of ‘human’ is done away with by an inanimate entity in R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Monstrosity exists on the borders precisely to question the ‘human’ and point towards the ‘posthuman.’ If we understand ‘empire’ as being suggestive of the supremacy of humans, we reach
an altogether new level in critical posthumanism.