The Philosophy of David Cronenberg

Contents

Contents Introduction 1 Simon Riches Part 1. Body Horror and Bodily Transformation The Fly and the Human: Ironies of Disgust 9 Colin McGinn Tragedy and Terrible Beauty in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises 24 Cynthia Freeland Cronenberg as Scientist: Antiessentialism, Sex as Remixing, and the View from Nowhere 36 Peter Ludlow What Happens to Brundle? Problems of Teleportation and Personal Identity in The Fly 53 Paul F. Snowdon Part 2. Psychology, Skepticism, and the Self eXistenZial Angst 69 Duncan Pritchard “Freaks of Nature”: Extrasensory Perception and the Paranormal in the Films of David Cronenberg 77 Keith Allen vi Contents Deception and Disorder: Unraveling Cronenberg’s Divided Minds 91 Simon Riches Psychological Determinism in the Films of David Cronenberg 113 Daniel Shaw Self-Creation, Identity, and Authenticity: A Study of A History of Violence and Eastern Promises 125 Daniel Moseley Part 3. Words and Worldviews The Fiction of Truth in Fiction: Some Reflections on Semantics and eXistenZ 143 Graham Stevens Re(ct)ifying Empty Speech: Cronenberg and the Problem of the First Person 155 Brook W. R. Pearson The Politics of Mad Science in The Fly and Dead Ringers 175 R. Barton Palmer From “Impassioned Morality” to “Bloodless Agnosticism”: A Philosophy of David Cronenberg through the Burroughs/Ballard Axis 197 Jones Irwin List of Contributors 217 Index 221 ...