³%DFNRQWKHPHQX´ Humans, insectoid aliens, and the creation of ecophobia in science fiction

Larissa Budde

This chapter examines firstly the indebtedness of the aliens to a selection of real world insects, and the use to which these allusions are put to create a gulf between human and alien characters. Secondly, the idea of the hive, which is both an actual place and a phenomenological concept within the films, is analysed. I hope to show that the symbiotic relationship between insectoid alien and hive can be viewed as a metaphor of ecophobia, since the organic chaos of the alien world, though portrayed in abject images, at the same time responds to a sense of inhabiting a more-than- human universe. The hive is shown as a miniature ecosystem, and even fulfils the grounding, reconciling function that David Abram located in the phenomenological rediscovery of interconnectedness with a living, planetary environment and specif- ically in the sense of being organisms enclosed in a larger, meta-hive-like organism.

1. ³:HFDQ¶WWUXVWWKHLQVHFW´1

The motif of the insect is widely used in the media and in popular culture. Especially the images of the predatory insect and its social structure the hive are often employed to convey different relationships between humans and their other-than-human surroundings. All these representations reveal a striking similarity in their semiotic production and their meaning: they all serve to underpin the alterity of the other- than-human, and the insect and the hive as sinister entities become synonymous with ecophobia. The insect signifies not only the ultimate other of the human, but also its abjection and downright negation. It becomes the ultimate adversary of the human by a double process, for

1 Seth Brundle, meditating on insect and human nature in The Fly. 126 Larissa Budde the biologically observed reality of the insect fuses with the human- imposed semiotic structures that depend on and perpetuate a dialectic relationship between insect others and human selves. This binary opposition of self/other, human/animal, civilisa- tion/nature that still gives meaning and identity to modern humanity is especially obvious in the representation of the abject human/insect hybrids that form the most common enemy in popular culture media, such as the Aliens of the Alien-saga and the Wraith of Stargate Atlantis. The insect-heritage of the aliens not only exemplifies and justifies their moral destitution and inhumanity; it also allows the equation of inhumanity and non-humanity, so that the statement becomes ethical rather than political. The organic other-than-human is equated with a hostile and chaotic other that threatens to devour the isolated human, and elements that constitute the insect and the hive are conveyed as distinctly gendered. Through the abject depiction of processes like feeding and reproduction, both of which symbolise an elemental openness of the body, the insects and those who bear their PDUNDUHH[FOXGHGIURPSHUVRQKRRGDQGVHOIKRRG7KHKLYH¶VDSSDUHQW denial of individual meaning on the one hand confirms the notion of the closed human self, and on the other reveals a covert longing for a more-than-human2 environment. While the imagined ultra-technol- ogical future creates the insectoid alien as a representative of the organic world, the hive emerges as synonym of the ecosystem: it externalises, others, and finally eliminates both the organic in general DQGµQDWXUH¶DVDV\VWHPRIPRUH-than-human relations.

2 ,UHWDLQ$EUDP¶VWHUPµPRUH-than-KXPDQ¶WRLQGLFDWHWKHLQFOXVLYHQHVs of a varied, multifarious environment co-inhabited by different organisms, whereas the term µRWKHU-than-KXPDQ¶ FRQYH\V DQ H[FOXVLYH VHSDUDWLQJ SHUFHSWLRQ WKDW TXDOLILHV organisms on the basis of being (not/partly/fully) human. A short time after completion of this paper a new book by David Abram was published through Vintage Books New York, Becoming Animal. An Earthly Cosmology. Please note that the additional material contained in that book was not available for reference at the time of writing. The general approach and a number of details covered would have profited IURPWKHVHQHZILQGLQJVHVSHFLDOO\WKHFRQFHSWRIµVSDFHVKLS(DUWK¶WKHUHODWLRQVKLS of children to insects, and the importance of depth perception in relation to flat screens. In the light of this new publication, there is room for expansion of the discussion.