Under the Skin: Science Fiction as Posthuman Cultural Ecology

Considering science fiction under the perspective of cultural ecology and as a ‘special case’ of re-mediation, Under the Skin, a novel by Michel Faber (2000) and the homonymous movie directed by Jonathan Glazer (2013) can be considered as ‘imaginative counter discourses’ exploring the posthuman subject. Science fiction, by offering multiple interpretative (im)possibilities of the real transcending the necessity of mimetic transparency, is an exploration of the possible laterals of experience. Both the novel and the movie, in interdependent ways, face in imaginative forms complex interspecies relations, gender violence, the separation between nature and technology, the exploitation of living beings in the consumerist world. ‘Under the skin’ indicates the communal humanity offended and claims the recognition of the interdependence between the self and the other, within the ecosystem and the media that ‘mediate’ and communicate them.