Dreaming the Posthuman: Nonhuman Entanglements And Affective Sonic Immersion — A Case Study

Abstract

At the juncture of the fourth industrial revolution, driven by techno-capitalism and marked by nature depletion and social upheavals (Mbembe, 2024; Suárez-Villa, 2009), posthumanism has accompanied the exploration of alternative narratives that decenter the human subject and embrace nonhuman alterities to create possible futures (Wolfe, 2010). This paper analyzes Ildikó Enyedi’s film On Body and Soul (2017), arguing that its decentering strategies serve as a crucial text that challenges human exceptionalism. This paper contends that through sound affective immersivity and the representation of nonhuman entanglements in dream sequences, the film establishes logical contradictions that mediate the narrative through visceral and precognitive levels that bypass rational closure. Thus, the film materializes entanglement, contesting dualism and reconstituting the human subject through embodied and embedded experience.