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Technology and femininity in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine

Shingler, Katherine

Authors

Katherine Shingler



Abstract

This article examines the intersection of technology and femininity in Marcel L’Herbier’s 1924 silent film L’Inhumaine, focusing on the film’s articulation of a figure of machine-woman who may be read as alternately inhuman and posthuman. The article draws on previous scholarship by Maureen Shanahan and others who have read the film through the lens of queer theory, but contends that any queer potentiality is effectively shut down at the end of the film. Offering a new reading of the mysterious machine that is used to reanimate and transform the heroine, I argue that the vision of a posthuman, technologically-mediated woman that emerges at the end of the film is far from emancipatory, and that despite its questioning of normative femininity, L’Inhumaine ultimately advances a conservative gender politics that chimes with a broad social and cultural retour à l’ordre in 1920s France.

Citation

Shingler, K. (2019). Technology and femininity in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine. Modernist Cultures, 14(2), 236-259. https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2019.0252

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 22, 2018
Online Publication Date May 1, 2019
Publication Date May 1, 2019
Deposit Date Mar 23, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Modernist Cultures
Print ISSN 2041-1022
Electronic ISSN 1753-8629
Publisher Edinburgh University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 14
Issue 2
Pages 236-259
DOI https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2019.0252
Keywords machine-woman, posthuman, queer theory, silent film, technology of orgasm
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/921171
Publisher URL https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/mod.2019.0252
Additional Information This is an Author’s Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in Modernist Cultures. The Version of Record is available online at: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/mod.2019.0252

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