Reconfiguring Humanity: Posthuman Bodies and Technological Mediation in Julia Ducournau’s <i>Titane</i>

Abstract This article explores the interconnection between the machine world and the human body, examining how technological advances have reconfigured and reshaped human existence in a machine-mediated world. The body horror film Titane (2021), written and directed by the French writer Julia Ducournau, constructs a provocative and dystopian atmosphere while examining the complexities of human nature. How humans transform into cybernetic systems or cyborgs marks a shift from traditional liberal humanist ideals to a complex posthuman material reality that blurs the boundaries between humans and machines through technological innovations such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The film problematizes the complex relationship between machine and human passions, exploring themes of love, sex, violence, brutality, and sensuousness through a posthuman lens. The article also examines the medium of film through the theoretical lenses of Steven Shaviro, Walter Benjamin, and Julia Kristeva. Additionally, it examines how the vitality and vibrancy of the nonhuman world can evoke object sexualities in humans such as car eroticism, transgressing corporeal boundaries and becoming-machine in a posthuman world.