Becomings-Cunt: Flesh, Fold and Infinity signification: head as seat of logic, face as signifying plane of subjectivity, race, age, genitals as signifier of gender and possible sexuality and sexual configurations in relation This article positions female genitalia as a model through with other subjects. Becoming investigates and exploits which a project of becoming may be launched. Female the relations between these forces of subjugation and seeks genitalia should not be understood as metaphor or as tactics to reorient the strata indefinitely. Becoming does a reflection applied to a becoming after the project. not become, it launches projects of differentiation through Becoming-cunt engages with the materiality of both affinity with various terms to deterritorialise the constant becoming and the cunt as fleshly, risky and challenging reiteration of subjectivity as returning to ‘itself’. In this to the basic dominant paradigms of thought and subjec- article the cunt is used as a becoming because it values tivity. Briefly, becoming, after Gilles Deleuze and Felix certain principles without fetishising the subject ‘woman’, Guattari, is a project where one enters into an unnatural and because it defies many dominant conceptual para- alliance with another term, in order to transform. Some digms without necessarily exchanging them for other par- of Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestions include becom- adigms. It does not oppose dominant culture with another ing-dog and becoming-woman. However the desire for culture, but with multiplicity, indeterminacy and infinity. becoming is not a desire to become. It is not mimicry, like- Becoming-cunt is, put simply, configuring the flesh and ness, imitation or metaphor. Becoming takes the aspects subjectivity differently, and doing different things with it of the becoming term and through engaging with aspects which involute it with other things in different ways, all of the term alters the trajectories of existence. One enters of which continue a trajectory of transformation of the becomings through alterations of speed and slowness, subject as it exists in spatio-temporality. Becoming-cunt materiality, perception, corporeal orientation and desire. takes the folds and plurality of the form of the cunt as a Becoming involves the fold of form and force of subject problematic and unstable schema which challenges the and becoming term to create a unique hybrid unlike paradigms affirmed through the symbol of the phallus any other due to the unnatural nature of the relation. in dominant culture’s articulation of subjectivity as itself Becoming offers existence defined through proliferation singular, stable and essentially spatial. The schema of the and a theorisation of subjectivity upon a trajectory of con- cunt acts as a basis for the ways in which the flesh and self tinual and inevitable transformation. It resists the molar may exist differently to become otherwise. being as fixed spatially, demarcated from other beings and defined through systems of resemblance (metaphor) and relationship (metonym). Becoming dissipates the subject What is a Cunt? spatially into series of molecular configurations which constellate as a multiplicity of forces impacting and alter- That this question is impossible to answer heralds the ing each other. Modern culture comprehends the subject power of the cunt to reorient sense and substance. It is through the stratification of forms, from body to society, impossible to conceptualise ‘a’ cunt in the same way as which defines and reifies everything from one’s own flesh one can conceive of ‘a’ penis. Although the model of the to one’s social existence. Being as a body is a formalisa- cunt is theoretically and culturally used as the equiva- tion of flesh into smaller forms which have function and lent of ‘a’ cock, ‘a cock’ is a singular and hermeneutic

  entity when referred to in its dominant form. ‘A’ cunt is Why not ‘vagina’? The tension between the cunt as an indefinite plural, as ambiguous as ‘a few’ or ‘a lot’. Unlike insult and the vagina as the most frequently cited ‘version’ male genitalia, female genitalia have no clear demarcation of female genitalia insinuates a familiar proximity of ways between themselves and the rest of the body, and within in which the female is presented. Culture’s focus on the them self, in the same way as a penis and testicles. Two infinity of the vaginal cavity from whence life comes equiv- provisos must be introduced here however. This article ocates it with the penis, as receptacle, as purposeful in its neither advocates the supremacy of the cunt, nor of the function as reproductive and giver of male pleasure, and as female who wields it. The cunt, while not a metaphor but repudiation of the unruly multiplicity of female genitalia. a political and subjectival model, is adamantly available to While the penis signifies beyond its reproductive func- all bodies who wish to deterritorialise their traditional, and tion, the cunt is reduced to lack. The vagina literally and especially dominant, configuration. Secondly the use of actually represents a blind-spot. It is seen as empty space the word ‘cunt’ as opposed to ‘vulva’ comes as a response or aperture despite the vaginal walls being in permanent to ‘cunt’ being the limits of semiotic profanity in Western occlusion. It is invisible ‘space’, needing to be ‘filled’. The culture, where the actual signifier of non-specific female rest of the vulva is either ignored or quickened toward the genitalia is exchanged for the signifier of a repulsive or clitoris, seen as a truncated penis, despite the clitoris being offensive or, more resonant with its affinity with women, an organ purely for the experiencing of pleasure and hav- disorderly or disobedient subject, particularly male (essen- ing no other discernible function, neither in biology, anat- tially men most often call other men ‘cunts’ when they fail omy or physiology. This blind spot is explicitly revealed to fulfil an expectation). Hence the offence of cunt is in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud demarcated the social redeemed from its expropriation from female anatomy to ingraining of female ‘absence’ as an example of anatomy majoritarian insult. Majoritarian refers to adherence to being subsumed into cultural development as ‘castration’, rigid and traditional paradigms of value, power, percep- Jacques Lacan emphasised the visual aspect of this subsu- tion and force (action/will). The disobedience of the cunt mation, and Luce Irigaray elucidates the larger philosophi- is intimately related to the transgression of paradigms of cal trajectories in dominant culture that make the way we the singular, the onomastic, the visual and the functional understand genitalia as a symptom rather than the cause of which the cunt performs. The cunt can therefore offer a the blind spot. Although psychoanalysis is misunderstood becoming-minoritarian, an active repudiation of majori- as introducing, rather than simply observing, these symp- tarian systems which create and proliferate the singularity toms, it should not be underestimated as an important of majoritarianism without exchanging one paradigm for introduction to the fold of culture, anatomy and subjectiv- another. Similarly this article uses the term ‘perversion’ as ity that sees the maintenance of dominant systems as both a repudiation of the compulsory heterosexual act thought macrocosmic through larger epistemological fields, from along traditional paradigms of force and power. No act government to philosophy and science, and microcosmic is discarded, but dominant modes of thinking various in the genesis, development and continual re-enactment of acts are perverse in a subversive and hence reoriented self as inextricable social and corporeal. way. Perversion shares an intimate relation with becom- The preposition of the penis as the possibility of geni- ing-cunt, where perversion as temporal libidinal flow can talia offers alternatives as, not ‘other’ genitalia, but simply facilitate various forms of becoming-cunt. ‘no’ genitalia.

  That which fails to be male – the transvestite, the weak, what of a desirable becoming. Theoretically one becomes- the perverse, the feminine – is reduced to an emasculated penis, or more appropriately becomes-phallus, no less and hence signified castrated subject. Subjects which are than one becomes-cunt. The major difference is the pro- emasculated are not wounded but instead wound the sanc- liferation of infinite force found in becoming-cunt rather tity of the divine male white subject, in the same way that than the reiteration of dominant paradigms of power and the insult ‘cunt’ wounds only that which defines itself as abstract ideology in becoming-phallus. A becoming-phal- emphatically not cunt. That the male position is a single lus is no becoming at all, rather an ambition to a pinnacle, position, against which everything else falls away, means a subjugation of velocity and trajectory to arrival. Here the that we are not talking about men and women, but the phal- phallus turns away from an anatomical object and spreads lic and the cunt-ed; female, pervert, ‘everything else’. ‘It is out as a locus for all discourse. ‘Man constitutes himself rather a heterogeneous, corporeal and verbal ordeal of fun- as a gigantic memory, through the position of the central damental incompleteness: a “gaping”, “less than One”. For point, its frequency (insofar as it is necessarily reproduced the destabilised subject who comes out of that – like a cru- by each dominant point) and resonance (insofar as all of cified person opening up the stigmata of its desiring body the points tie in with it.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 293) to a speech that structures only on the condition that it let Memory insinuates return and re-reification. Memorials go.’ (Kristeva: 27) Within this logic, however, we do not to greatness, from buildings to mathematics advocate the have two but a single subject position and only a failure to superiority of the singular, the visible, the knowable, the be that subject position. The penis, of course, is a phantasy ontological, the unifunctional, the static, the solid, and the of significance. Its presence is not on view but in ordinary logical. Re-iteration is the recounting of the already-been social situations the body and hierarchical stratification of to maintain that which is valued in culture. This is why in the subject is oriented around its presumed presence. We sexual activity the placement of the penis defines its value are not (cultural) male because we have a (biological) penis, – in a vagina it reiterates its solidity and logic through its we have a (biological) penis because we are (cultural) male. juxtaposition with the fluid or empty and the ‘mystery’ Although women are never truly capable of becoming-male, of female pleasure. In an anus, bifurcated, proliferated to the more successfully they align themselves along masculin- the entire perineum or full undifferentiated flesh in rela- ist majoritarian trajectories, the better they are able to reap tion to itself or other animate and inanimate elements a (diluted) version of male privilege. This is precisely why the penis does not conform to the place or function of the call to becoming-cunt is urgently encouraged of all sub- the phallus and hence perverts it. Such a configuration of jects, regardless of and beyond both gender and traditional pleasure also resists defining the penis spatially by tracking corporeal striation. Incompleteness is something in which its motion and force with its placement as temporo-spa- one explores rather than to which one is subjected. tial. Heterosexual frequency defines the phallus primar- ily through where it is, not what it does there or how it transforms and is transforming. Heterosexual intercourse Penile Paradigms comes less from desire than memory. It also repeats rather than explodes narratives of production and value. The Taking the cunt as a desirable model toward which one penis resonates with its own conceptual value only in the seeks to become means that the penis must also be some- way it frequents the functions of phallocentric culture.

  assignable to a theoretical ensemble (semantic, formal, it The dominant paradigms of solidity, repeatability, singu- matters little) and shown equally to despair of such an assig- larity and ontological sensibility refer the penis to the sci- nation. (Lyotard: 31) entific equation and architecture no less than to the phal- lus. ‘The “place” thus turns out to have been in someway Both Irigaray and Lyotard emphasise the inextricability planned and punctuated for the purpose of calculating of all projects, so that desire and the flesh, memory and each “all” but also the “all” of the system’ (Irigaray, 1985: immanence form a möebius configuration. This is incar- 108) Sexuality is trains through tunnels, scientific/mathe- nated through two axes of duration and immanence, and matical experimentation that produces repeatable results, relation. material final solid and tangible products demanded of any action. Normalised phallic sex is factory, equation, mechanics, on-off switches, demarcated and defined. It Form and Force-Fold is contradictive in that it is epistemically discrete while simultaneously resonant with all other dominant ‘logical’ Becoming-cunt is a becoming of form, force and fold. systems. Perversion, female pleasure and the cunt are all Form refers to the matter of the cunt in space, its rela- illogical. They are non-repeatable, fluid, and ill-defined. tionship to those forms around it which define and alter They neither resonate with phallic systems nor frequent its mutable borders, and its (re)formalisation of bodies the dominant icon to gain definition and recognition. and subjects. Force is becoming-cunt’s power to act and There is a need to explore the cunt as a material model be acted upon in time. Fold describes the temporo-spatial that challenges phallic form and function, thereby con- möebian band within which becoming-cunt invaginates figurations of flesh and desire. ‘If there is no double desire, the subject as an extension of internal and external mat- the positive and negative poles divide themselves between ter, which flattens out the stratified and hierarchically the two sexes instead of establishing a chiasmus or a dou- produced and presented body. It is a schema by which the ble loop in which each can go toward the other and come spatial form and the temporal duration of becoming-cunt back on itself.’ (Irigaray, 1993: 9) Becoming-cunt doubles may be thought. desire only insofar as it brings an other to the singular model of phallocentrism. In cunt’s capacity as presenting proliferation rather than alternative it addresses the need Form for an infinite number of refleshed-desiring projects, of which phallocentrism is one, rather than exchanging the The form of cunt is indefinite. It is both spreading out former for the latter. and convergence of labia; it is the unity of the clitoris and its concealment of the urethra, where a single organ is This effect is not of duality but duplicity. In the “theoretical palimpsest. The vaginal ‘aperture’ is a volitional hole, that order” it will be necessary to proceed in this way, like this which is both penetrable and ingurgitant. The general duplicitous bar [Irigaray’s double-loop], not through anxi- perinea, the indiscernibility between what constitutes the ety over mimeticism or adaequatio, because thought itself cunt (not the thigh) and what constitutes the surrounds is libidinal, because what counts is its force (intensity)…It (not cunt) and the internal aspect of the cunt, which is therefore necessary that what one thinks can always be reflects the infinite potential found in the exploration of

  them so many inseparable variations on which it confers an all internality (seen in such activities as speculum sex, fist- equipotentiality without confusion…under its first aspect of ing, and douche and enema play among other things) offer absolute form , appears as the faculty of concepts, that is to an organ far removed materially and conceptually from say, as the faculty of their creation (Deleuze and Guattari, the hypostasis of the phallus. If this describes an ‘actual’ 1994: 210–211) cunt, how can we think the becoming-cunt of all subjects? Becoming-cunt is the move from subjectivity defined as Although Deleuze and Guattari are referring to the brain, singular, to entering into the already collective assem- the cunt is actualised in the brain as form which creates blage that is a cunt. Acknowledging the materiality of the rather than refers. However the cunt extends the chaos penis in itself offers Lyotard’s call to address the inherent of perception and brain physiology to visceral and libidi- libidinality of thought, but the penis as material is rarely nal levels. Although we cannot know the brain, we rarely explored, through such things as urethral penetration, ‘think’ the viscera. (The correlation between cunt and penile bifurcation and other explorative forms of perver- viscera is explored below.) The cunt here is emphatically sion. Such perversions show, however, the becoming-cunt not a concept to which we apply our becoming, it does not of the penis, which also necessitates the becoming-cunt appear prior to the act of thinking through it, which is also of the subject performing these activities and the becom- the act of creating it as a perception-thought-force. The ing-cunt of that acting and acted upon subject defined cunt is infinite determinates and its dimensions become through its form as created by the relation to other forms reformation of the single plane through perception as cre- (both materially and conceptually) by which it is sur- ation. Unlike the phallus, which has already been folded rounded and thus constituted. Conversely female genitalia into a particular configuration to the extent that to create reduced to a functional penetrable hole is the repudiation it as a concept is subsumed by its immediate presence to of becoming-cunt. It simply facilitates majoritarianism. its own transcendent form. The phallus is actualised as a Thus becoming-cunt is contingent on modes of material re-creation, the indeterminability and indeterminacy of exploration and thought and although the specificities of the cunt is a creation, by being traditionally antagonistic to each becoming-cunt are unique, they share theoretical transcendence as the actualisation of versions of definite perception and reorientation as their loose commonality. and finite form. What is woman, what is female pleasure? If cunt is infinite and indefinite, how can we refer to it Female flesh is traditionally both libidinally and epistemi- as being of a form? Deleuze and Guattari state of form as cally veiled form and illuminated only through its cor- a turning point in thought; respondence to male pleasure. Attempts to know female embodied desire necessitates the death of majoritarian Neither a Gestalt nor a perceived form, but a form in itself subjectivity, which is why theorists refer to the fatal results that does not refer to any external point of view… It is an of the ancients’ attempt to find female pleasure; Medusa’s absolute consistent form that surveys itself independently gaze (Cixous), the Sirens’ call (Foucault) and the gaze of any supplementary dimension which does not appeal of Orpheus (Blanchot). Female pleasure is not simply therefore to any transcendence, which has a single side unimagined but the unimaginable. No concept escapes whatever the number of its dimensions, which remains actualisation as creation, however the more former ref- copresent to all its determinations without proximity or dis- erents the brain considers, the less revolutionary the cre- tance, traverses them at infinite speed, and which makes of ation is likely to be. The phallus has more in common with

  ‘man’ as its own concept, than with flesh as a thinking pla- refold in time. For each form there are those forms which teau. The phallus confirms the phantasy of pure logos, the impress upon it to offer its form as the act of creation and cunt a fleshly folding and unfolding of the act of thought reaction through those forms which buttress it; mouth, as creation rather than referral to the already thought. genital, skin, object, breath, heat, vibration, cold, absence, What is the cunt indeed? It is non-visual full-frontal. It pressure, vacuum. However form goes beyond phenom- requires exploration to see (but not know) it. The speculum enology as formation in time. Forms fold and refold, suggests the phantasy of knowledge through visualisation, recreating their own forms by their capacity to influence but the speculum, ignoring the vulva, examines empty themselves. At the same time they influence external ele- space and thus affirms the infinity of the cunt as internal ments and external elements influence them. The cunt, (visceral) and external (dural). Because the cunt is inter- as already noted, has no hermeneutic form and thus its nal, external, relatively smooth mons verenis full frontal, form as a relation of forces is particularly challenging. In occluded and splayed labia, and various other possible becoming-cunt the act of conceptualising a cunt, which configurations depending on positioning, to see it through has no transcendent form, creates another dimension to one perception or orientation is impossible. The body the act of becoming; a constellation of conceiving as cre- must actually be reformed or refolded to catch a glimpse ating, while becoming. In order to become, form must be of all the cunt’s various aspects. reoriented from analogy to transformation through con- tagion. However because the cunt form is itself unstable, a variant on becoming appears. This is a form of demonic Force becoming, discussed below. Due to its instability the proj- ect of becoming is inseparable to the temporal rethinking ‘For there is no portion of matter which is not actually sub- of the becoming term. The concept of the cunt is a moving divided into others; so the parts of any body are actually term, and while other terms shift during becoming, the infinite… much less can we arrive at the end of our analysis cunt shifts its own shifting and both involutes and prolifer- if we seek the mover of each body which is moved, an again ates the becoming to what it attempts to become (remem- the mover of this; for we shall always arrive at smaller bodies bering becoming is an infinite becoming where one never without end’ (Leibniz: 98) becomes). Its force is therefore multiplied. The past is an act of memory contracted into immanent creation, what is called the ‘remembered present’. Can we say we have a memory of cunt in the same way as we refer Fold to the meaning of the phallus as a historical artefact? This lack of memory directly contributes to the lack of forma- The folding of matter refers to the involution of two forms tion which contributes to the lack of futured present – the and their impact within and upon each others memory, idea of force as potentially affective beyond its immediacy. future and present form and force. Two forms, their abil- This means becoming-cunt is particularly risky and thus ity to impact upon each other, create an inextricable band. particularly politically revolutionary. The fold is not the result but the act of force of forms. It In the act of creating the cunt as concept toward its vari- describes the acts of creation when the creation of con- ous becoming potentials, the cunt’s dimensions fold and cepts and the acts of force are thought. Becoming-cunt is

  how we are cunt and cunt is us, how we reform cunt and as cunt. Becoming-cunt is also not limited to the assembled cunt, and how cunt reforms us and as us. While each form form; indistinguishability extends beyond the primary becomes the other, their specificity is essential to their undertaking of flesh-cunt-fold. ‘A multiplicity is defined becoming. The forms do not homogenise but retain speci- not by its elements, nor by a centre of unification or com- ficity and yet assemble. ‘If two distinct things can be really prehension. It is defined by the number of dimensions it inseparable, two inseparable things can be really distinct.’ has; it is not divisible, it cannot lose or gain a dimension (Deleuze: 12) The fold of cunt and self creates a simulta- without changing its nature…a multiplicity is continu- neity of differential elements and integration. According ally transforming itself into a string of other multiplici- to Leibniz, unlike inanimate forms which are components ties, according to its thresholds and doors’ (Deleuze and of assembled parts, organic elements cannot have their Guattari, 1987: 249) The multiplicity of becoming-cunt choices inferred in advance, thus an organic is required in as an assemblage reassembles the tensors and thresh- becoming, through relations with organic or inorganic ele- olds upon which it expresses force and by which force is ments. ‘Yet the mind has this much physical indifference, expressed upon its various planes and dimensions. The that it is not even subject to physical necessity, far less self, the cunt and the world become threshold. Becoming- metaphysical; that is, no universal reason or law of nature cunt, then, equivocates with becoming other multiple is assignable from which any creature, no matter how per- collectives by way of contagion of force. Below I will rudi- fect and well informed about this mind, can infer with cer- mentarily sketch suggestions for other becomings which tainty what the mind will choose’ (Leibniz: 102) One’s own can be becomings-cunt. Becomings themselves multiply incapacity for inference is included. And the cunt neither through the undertaking; one may begin becoming-cunt follows a predictable narrative of temporal ‘choice’ (what and find oneself as becoming-splanchnic, becoming- it will do) nor spatial choice (what it will be). demonic and becoming-cinesexual, the ecstasy of involu- Becoming-cunt is splaying of self, becoming-indeter- tion with the image as material force. minate, palimpsest, the open and pure intensity of being a visceral, viscous and shuddering series of pleasures beyond and in excess of the phallus. It may include aspects Zombies are Cunts of becoming-clitorised, variously penetrated and penetrat- ing, onanistic and orgiastic, confusing dominance and The cunt is a horror show. It compels horror, reveals the submission and most importantly, becoming-more-than- horror in phallocentric culture of both the nothing to see one. Not knowing what will be-come of oneself as mate- and the labyrinthine, impossible to visually arrest from riality, where pleasure and one’s subjectivity and gender one perspective. It contradicts without dictums. Retained is established by one’s sexual role is not narratively con- within traditional dialectic paradigms it encroaches upon structed as it is in heterosexual intercourse thought tradi- many borders – the singular and the plural, the visible and tionally. Becoming-cunt is receptive and ravenous, desire invisible, the productive and unproductive, the internal as infinite and inevitable. Primarily, seen in my inability and external. The horror of the cunt is part of its appeal to describe the cunt beyond binaries while including both toward political minoritarian becoming. It is simultane- poles of each, the cunt offers the folding of binaries them- ously unknowable and palpably horrific. Its dis-play, like selves to make them as indistinguishable as the form of the the word cunt, is the final frontier of profanity in both

  visual and epistemological representation. It shares much Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992).) Zombies, like cunts, are with another frontier of excess, the viscera. The viscera has not at the threshold but are threshold. Zombies are living surface and is internal, is ‘safe’ only when concealed, offers dead, but they are not dead, and they are not alive. They a materiality beyond that known through the traditional neither oscillate nor exchange one position for another. hierarchy of the body, and is, like female genitalia in gen- They are threshold in the same way the cunt is not inside, eral, given to us via professional discourse. Our cunt and nor outside, neither singular, nor multiple, and even epis- viscera are our flesh known primarily through signification temologically neither dead nor alive, present nor absent. external to sense and which formulates what we believe Frontiers in the best zombie movies are pushed just as the the limits and thresholds of these organs are, which define skin concealing the viscera is pushed open. Skin as signi- the function, form and hence future of their embodiment fier of self goes from being signifier to threshold. Examples within us. Organs, like the cunt, constitute our material- may be found in various zombie films, but as one example ity and yet are the most alien and alienating aspects of City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci 1980) is the story of a our inevitable fleshiness suppressed in order to affirm our town that becomes the site to an opened gate of Hell after subjectivity as intelligible self rather than matter. This is the community’s priest Father William Thomas (Fabrizio not, of course, to suggest that we reverse intelligibility to Jovine) commits suicide. He returns as an apparition to pure sense, but asks what can be unfolded and refolded torment the residents. In one scene he comes across Rose within the embodied self when and if we become as much Kelvin (Daniela Doria) and her boyfriend Tommy Fisher viscera as skin, as much entrails as brain? The cunt as (Michele Soavi) in a car and prompts Rose to bleed from internal/external, as part of that which stratifies (male or her eyes and vomit her intestines. He then rips the back of female) and that which confounds the body means it is Tony’s head away. Rose vomiting her intestines puts her also a threshold that, when unfolded, creates new con- as, not at, threshold. Her consuming mouth expels, her figurations. When we become cunt new plateaus of flesh own alimentary organs become food for her consump- essential but foreign to conceiving self as one aspect or tion, albeit backward, so that the tasting of flesh is about dimension of the fold are revealed and reorganised. Most mouth feel, not nutrition. Disgust and pleasure seduce hard core pornography subsumes the cunt and the trajec- the viewer, and Rose’s groans reflect this ambivalence. tories upon which it launches a becoming by penetrating Rose’s bleeding eye sockets add an ecclesiastic resonance it with both camera and heterosexual, semen producing to the moment; ocular stigmata and miraculous emission. penis, emphatically reorienting both its function and lack The tearing of Tommy’s brains from the apex of his head of form. Misogynist horror films create the wound within by Father Thomas transforms his cerebellum from logos the woman, thereby ‘knowing’ and ‘owning’ the cunt to a pleasurable plateau of flesh for digital desire. Like through volitionally and mimetically being responsible Rose, Tommy also groans. The fate of the two teenagers is for its genesis. But extreme gore frequently offers cunts interesting in that their gender does not orient their fate, as becomings rather than subsuming them toward reaf- hence their bodies do not necessarily begin as tradition- firmations of phallic power. One example is the various ally organised stratified bodies. They are put there purely cinematic incarnations of zombies. Zombies interestingly to become-otherwise. If they were just to become zombies often lose their binarised gender when they become zom- through a bite their becoming-cunt would still be evinced bie (with some exceptions, such as the fucking zombies in – the bite’s mark is perceived but not affective signifier of

  the rejuvenating becomings the mark of the cunt offers. vets return from the war diseased with a cannibal virus. It remains within the parameters of the screen, where The cannibals in Cannibal Apocalypse become sexualised explicit gore tends to reach beyond the frame’s limits. in order to eat, reversing the Freudian orality drive to But because the moment of transformation is so gory, the eat so as to become sexualised. Again, however, these affect of the reorganised splayed flesh refolds the viewer demarcations are not clear, so we ask are these cannibals into their own negotiation of viscera and the force of the or zombies, are they eating or desiring sexually? The zom- image. The violence of these images is always contingent bies in Cannibal Apocalypse desire bodies differently. They on Tony and Rose’s imminent return from the dead. They desire bodies in a cuntly way, which is, reorganised so that don’t die; they redistribute their flesh and intensities. the unspecified flesh and the organs are sexually attrac- The allure of this becoming is so seductive that even Bob tive, and the sexual attraction is also alimentary. Charles (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), the only character whose Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) bites the breast of death is not caused by the priest but by a pneumatic drill a woman. Her horror comes with the realisation this bite through the head, comes back as a zombie anyway. The breaks the structural proportionality between the sexual violence affords, not destruction, but transformation. and the alimentary (the psychoanalytic oral drive). The In mean spirited misogynistic films such as Maniac bite is not metaphoric but the becoming sexual of the ali- (William Lustig, 1980) and Bloodsucking Freaks (Joel M. mentary and the becoming alimentary of the sexual. The Reed, 1976) the gore exists purely because of the gen- two are inextricably folded. One does not lead to another, dering of the victims, and reanimation of the dead is one is not exchanged for another. There is no serialisa- afforded as a vacuous redemptive gesture apparently to tion as there is from psychoanalysis’ instinct to drive (the vindicate the violence which precedes it. Thus violence, need to eat to oral desire). The sexual and the alimentary death and viscerality are not transformative becoming are contemporaneous. Bukowski’s act is the fold of sexual but phallic reiteration. Like cunts, zombies suppurate, hunger, not metaphorically but actually. Here zombies bleed, ingest, metamorphose, and are fascinating because act as and at threshold, creating their objects of desire as of their indeterminate form and the fear of not knowing threshold between the sexual and the visceral but always what they can and will do. Their fluids are both expelled libidinal. The folding of eating as sexual-hunger and the and retained. Cunts, and zombies, are vaguely perma- fold of eater and eaten is an involution of the becoming- nently wet. Menstrual blood is abject where semen is pure, cunt of the cannibal and victim. and this is yet another resonance between the cunt and the viscera. What pleasure do zombies get? Perhaps this is reducible in George Romero zombie movies to food, but Open up and say Cinemaaaaaaahhhhh Fulci’s zombie films (especiallyThe Beyond 1980), as well as cannibal zombie movies such as Cannibal Apocalypse If being the victim of zombies is a becoming-cunt, the act (Antonio Margheriti, 1980) see zombies doing rather per- of watching zombies is a way this pragmatically unavail- verse things. Fulci’s zombies don’t want to eat; they want able (as possible actual) position may be thought as a pos- to hang around groaning, clearly getting pleasure from sible becoming. Cinematic and televisual viewing forms something, though this pleasure’s origin and form are a fold of material affect between the viewer, who creates not evident. In Margheriti’s Cannibal Apocalypse Vietnam meaning in the images, and the images, which materi-

  ally affects the viewer, the becoming-cunt desire which is the image as able to affect the self, reorienting traditional cinesexual. Images are not reflections or representations trajectories of desire, pleasure and re-cognition of images of. They are their own plane of consistency. Meanings, as creation, in the same way as form is also created rather organisation of and recognitions in the images are pro- than recognised. The becoming viewer asks not ‘what does duced as acts of creation by the viewer. The image does this image resemble’, something difficult in the ‘unreal’ not reflect a real, but is itself a real substance capable of world of the zombie film, but ‘as what new consisten- producing effects in the viewer entirely contingent on each cy does this image fold me?’ Meaning and resemblance specific and unique moment of viewing, hence affects are are less important than differentiating intensities, defa- not repeatable or predictable even when the same image miliarisations and deterritorialisation of viewing subject is viewed repeatedly b the same subject. This is important and viewed. There may seem a contradiction in the idea to acknowledge in images which present ‘supernatural’ or that only the transcribably unfamiliar onscreen (zombies) impossible situations, such as zombification. The reduc- directly correlates with the defamiliarising of the offscreen tion of such horror films to ‘trash’ because they bear no (viewer) in becoming, which insinuates a breakdown of relation to reality repudiates their capacity to affect the transcribability. It all comes down to the way in which viewer and launch the viewer on their own becomings the act of viewing and the viewed is approached. In the through the act of viewing as a folding of image and flesh, same way that the penis is a phallus when understood forming new dimensions and aspects in the image and traditionally and something else when launched upon the subject. Viewing is not an exchange of information becomings-cunt, these images can affirm traditional dia- from screen to viewer. The image is not dialectic and the lectics, even by disciples of the disruptive affect of zom- configuration of viewer and viewed is not a monodirec- bie films. To repudiate the films as trash because they do tional relation of two points within a system of informa- not reflect reality, because they are ‘gross’ but also liking tion exchange. The image and the viewer act creatively them purely for their perversion of traditional paradigms in their perception of the other. What the image ‘shows’ refers them only to previously set down definitions. Even is perceived uniquely, and the viewer before the image is viewers who loath these films, but are folded by their unique, not evident to itself, never mind the screen. The defamiliarising affect, challenge the act of viewing as dia- screen presents differently for each moment of each sub- lectic. The becomings of viewing is not a why do I watch ject, itself a collective assemblage of force. Each image them (because I do or do not like them) but a how do the is an act of creation toward the phyla of the viewer and images involute with me. An involution that refers back viewing moment. The act of viewing can thus be seen as a to a previous pattern is different to the becoming-cunt becoming-cunt through the creation of folds and dimen- of the folding viewer and viewed that reveals and creates sions not predictable before the act of viewing. I remain different dimensions not previously formed. Of course no with zombie films here because they tend to jolt the sub- fold of viewer and viewed is identical to a former fold, but ject away from a celebration of the hermeneutic and rei- the desire to re-attain a former fold will be more likely to fied subject, but such becomings are potentially available produce an equivalent re-presentation of that fold, with in all acts of viewing. similarly equivalent effects and hence a similar version of Becoming-cunt through the act of viewing requires self will be maintained. Opening up as viewer, like a cunt primarily that the viewer open up to the potentiality of which opens not to reveal empty space but other multiple

  folds and aspects, dislodges the desire for the subject as ily), chastity (Church) or an acceptance of subjugation reliable and identical libidinal patterns to be repeated. (state). And it is, above all, an assemblage of folds, organs, Watching zombie movies, which offer disorganised bod- elements, textures, tastes and involutions with its disciples. ies, behaviour and worlds, makes it more difficult to refer It is, materially and conceptually, a rupture and rupturing. the images back to the ‘real’ world, to the already-seen and The cunt is a demon – convoked by the sorcerer fascinated hence already-known. Patterns of bodies in space acting with the possible but unknowable futures the cunt offers, and reacting can be very different in zombie films than tempted by the cunt’s seduction against the warnings of in realism or even the insipid synthetic worlds of many family, church, State. But like a demon the cunt must also Hollywood narratives. be evoked. It will not come unless it is desired and it can- not materialise unless in the psyche of the sorcerer. The idea of the cunt is the temptation, but its evocation is the Demonic Cunts demon with which the unholy alliance is formed and the becoming-cunt facilitated. Many demons in a variety of Becoming implies: literature and lore are, either cunts or cunt-like. This sec- tion will briefly sketch a few examples, but most demonic An initial relation of alliance with a demon… There is an forms follow the basic tenets of the cunt as somehow gen- entire politics of becomings-animal, as well as a politics der ambiguous, as assemblage or fold, as both tempting of sorcery, which is elaborated in assemblages that are and dangerous. Against the singularity of the phallus and neither those of the family nor of religion nor of the State. the majoritarian subject, ‘My name is Legion: for we are Instead they express minoritarian groups, or groups that are many’ said Satan (Mark 5:9) and so is the cunt and the oppressed, prohibited, in revolt or always on the fringe of affinities we form with it. recognised institutions, groups all the more secret for being Hellraiser (Clive Barker, uk, 1987) proffers to its pro- extrinsic, in other words, anomic. If becoming-animal takes tagonists, and the cinesexual, cuntly configurations of the form of a Temptation, and of monsters aroused in the demonic flesh and temptation away from the signifying imagination by the demon, it is because it is accompanied, paradigms of grand narratives of regulation, most per- at its origin as in its undertaking, by a rupture within the tinently the Church. It tells the story of a man seeking central institutions that have established themselves or seek extremes of experience who evokes (Or invokes? These to become established. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 247) are, in their own words ‘demons to some, angels to others’) The cunt is a tempting form. Its tempting aspect is tradi- a group of four ‘cenobites’ by opening a Chinese puzzle tionally one of the reasons for its danger and the imminent box known as the Lament Configuration. The Cenobites downfall of the (usually majoritarian) tempted. The cunt is are baroquely configured human bodies which bring the also a monster, all the more monstrous for simultaneously promise of pleasure and pain indivisible. Cenobite, more being so tempting, evoking the fascination of ambivalence. traditionally ‘coenobite’ etymology refers to religious or For all the ways the cunt transgresses and traverses domi- monastic figures which inherently live in groups from the nant phallic paradigms it is both prohibited and revolt-ing Greek koinobios, ‘to live in a community’. The community (in both senses of the word). The cunt, as opposed to the these cenobites form, this ‘convent’, is the event of con- obedient vagina, will not be defined by production (fam- vening. These are figures whose definition is premised on

  their being multiple, within a group, molecular lover to Jesus or Saint Anthony away from one polarity toward s/he who summons them. They are legion. The flesh of another, but demons who fold their flesh outward toward the four is variously contorted and folded: The lead ceno- their victims and inward in onanistic expressions of plea- bite Pinhead’s (Doug Bradley) skull is lacerated into a surable suffering. Of course onanism here does not refer to grid, at each juncture of which a nail is driven. His breast a hermeneutic solitary act but the act of doubling within flesh is pulled outside of his fetishistic leather cassock and the self to form multiple folds (like cunts, both more than involuted with the fabric. The female Cenobite’s (Grace and less than one): Pinhead, tormenter and seducer with- Kirby) flesh is similarly peeled through her clothing and out aim (threat), ambition or goal, and Female Cenobite, her throat is held open as a large vulvic would by an occult bubbling blood in her throat-cunt while promising plea- geometry of wire. Chatterer (Nicholas Vince) is named for sure outward in the inflected ecstasy of her own self-enjoy- his lipless dentation which continually chatters epilepti- ment. Promise, seduction and fear are plateaus of longing cally. Butterball (Simon Bamford) is an obese creature compelled by their lack of orientation, the absence of an with eyelids sewn together and a constantly protruding object of desire, and an instability which contracts the slug tongue. memory of pleasure with the trepidation of expectation However it is Pinhead and the Female Cenobite who are into a burst of non-satisfaction that nonetheless expels most interesting as it is they who mirror each other, both the self into a cunt configuration. These are harbingers of in their elegant articulations of flesh and language and in the exquisite spectacle of Hell which Orpheus could not their ambiguous genderings. They look similar, both bald, resist. Pinhead and Female Cenobite are spectacular ; like both waists hung with a variety of utensils for torture, and, the speculum, the image of their flesh and particularly unlike the other cenobites, both speak, to the extent that their faces, may compel the viewer to seek logic through their sentences are formed of relay interjections, rather the phallic gaze (why do they look this way, what does it than a single speaker orienting single sentences and thus mean?) Like the speculum, however, the gaze fails to show expressing singular, volitional and dividuated meanings. us the pure form of the spatial and temporal multiple, Against unified monotheism – ‘The Word’ – here, speech, which can never be ‘seen’ nor known. In its attempt to like the gender of these demons and the libidinal inten- reveal the female interior, the speculum ignores the vulva, sities they offer and enforce, beyond sado-masochism, and within its investigative frame sees nothing because it ambiguously as suffering and seduction, is both a prolifer- has not pre-signified something to see. The gaze can only ation of the singular and a contraction of the multiple into open to sight by refusing seeing as knowing, where signifi- one force (puissance, not pouvoir). Pinhead and Female cation affirms the divide between the materiality of image cenobite use each other’s mouth to speak, literally, they affect and the viewing flesh. The cenobite’s faces are their speak in tongues. most compelling plateaus of intensity. The face is tradi- ‘But always’ writes Deleuze ‘a molecular sexuality bub- tionally the primary textual signifier of flesh leading to bles away beneath the surfaces of the integrated sexes.’ subject – read the face and know the subject. Black, white, (1999: 76) What is this ‘sex’? It is gendered flesh, desire male, female, old, young, rich, poor, the face is a selection and structured parole becoming-cunt, intensification and of binary options that express in a singular (phallic) item. dissipation of two. It is also proliferation of the one, both The face is a biunivocalisation of self. To no longer be able body and desire. These are not demons who tempt us as to read a face makes it difficult to see a face. It is signifi-

  cation in shadow, the subject as glimpse and possibility, around established narratives in a similar way to dominant unstable and destabilising of self. This spectacle is a spec- sexual narratives – the masochist awaits and the sadist tacle in darkness, Pinhead’s face a black sun whose mean- teeters on the brink of action. These are searches for gods ing is emergent and submergent as is his pleasure and pain of satisfaction, blocking intensifications through satia- simultaneously. This Orphean cinesexual event is ‘the gaze tion which nonetheless must acknowledge its failure to that at the wavering threshold of death goes in search of cease desire through the compulsion of repetition (eternal the submerged presence and tries to bring its image back return). ‘There is, therefore, a great difference between to the light of day, but only secures the nothingness in the quantity of motion and force’ (Leibniz, 31). It is not which the poem can subsequently appear.’ (Foucault, 44, what one does to experience desire, but what quantities also see Blanchot’s ‘The Gaze of Orpheus’). This slashed of force and intensifications and dissipations affect the face, dishevelled yet geometric flesh, offers not narrative plane of consistency in desire. Against the focussed desire but poem, the simultaneity of non-transcribable metaphor of sadism, masochism and dominant sexuality, Pinhead rather than signifying and stabilising metonym. Female and Female Cenobite are torturers who are simultane- cenobite demands ‘look’ at her cunt-throat, and there is ously tortured by their own flesh. Their pleasure is mul- nothing to see except the gurgling of her own pleasure tiple not through bifurcation but through involution of within this voluminous aperture. Pinhead seethes with seeming binaries. Their flesh confounds the impossibility the multiple penetrations of a thousand nails, inverted of the binarised being copresent without temporal privi- phalluses lost to their significance through their prolif- lege. They are both, and both at once. Pinhead the torturer eration and their pointing toward rather than away from stands beside and within Pinhead the sufferer. Pinhead’s their bearer, like the gaze which points to the screen only and Female Cenobite’s lack of aggression in their acts of to have the image deflect within the aperture of the pupil torment adds to their seduction: Wilful violence without and the sweet suffering horror film affords. These then are the metonymic logical orientation of aggression, suffering cunt-faces, deliriously, beautifully so, and they make our without despair, promise without signified object or event, faces become-cunt through their affront of the penetra- sexual plethora without satisfaction. ‘As we are about to tive gaze. take the final step, we are beside ourselves with desire, ‘The object of the search is no longer God or truth, but impotent, in the clutch of a force that demands our dis- the search itself.’ (Lyotard, 45) Becoming-cunt seeks nego- integration.’ (Bataille, 141) Bataille’s beside is my within tiation to disinherit the dominant away from the abject, and without, where impotence is not the failure of desire which defines itself through repudiation of higher order but the disintegration of phallic desire toward becoming- signification; and sadism, inherently reliant on the Law cunt. The request of the viewer toward the cenobites in for its transgression; and even masochism, which, while their frightening beauty, ‘use me cinesexually’ involves an expressing an ‘opening up’ in its traditional form compris- active passivity, the power to powerlessness. That these, as es a pre-established contract. Although ‘the masochist’s many of the examples, are cinematic, does not fail to make aim is to escape from the consequences of the transgres- their ability to affect material. Bataille emphasises of all sion of the father’ (Deleuze, 1994: 106), like sadism, its eroticism, from the mystical to the sensual, the sacrifice of direct address to transgression of a Law is a reactive rather phallic self that nonetheless does not offer salvation from than active becoming. Both sadism and masochism orient solitude, because it is the effulgent awareness of the infin-

  ity of self as more than one but always painfully less than a theoretically phallic seduction (a finger emerges from self (solitude is not the self alone but the self split into the the tentacle) alongside a flower, traditionally symbolic of awareness of one’s own solitude). ‘When all is said and cunt, confusing his function as seducer thus affirming this done, that which in eroticism bears us to the pinnacles of desire he offers is no traditional desire. Indeed it is he who intensity also lays the curse of solitude on us at the same is penetrated by a giant penis, the tip of which expresses a time.’ (Bataille, 262) Both the poignancy and liberation of neurology drill that revolves within his brain. Each whirl the ecstasy of self are reliant on the acknowledgement of of the drill causes dyslalia, as Channard’s words turn to the fallacy of integration. These feelings are not unfamiliar ecstatic pained moans, and language moves from words to to those open to libidinal folding, the undulating intensi- flesh, meaning to affect. The sheath of the penis clutches ties that both make us ‘scatter into the lightness of what is Channard’s skull with tentacles, dissipating rather than unimaginable’ (Foucault, 23). affirming its form. The enormous penis, which explicitly If Hellraiser offers the elegant delights of the cunt-faced looks like a penis (there is no deflected or metaphoric ecstasy of Pinhead and Female Cenobite, then its sequel representation here) is a penis becoming-cunt, not the Hellbound (Tony Randel, 1988) is world become cunt. phallus. It offers representation (recognisable image) nei- The characters are drawn into Hell itself. When Pinhead ther with automatic signification (phallus) nor exchanged is reintroduced to Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), the girl who signification, as becoming-cunt cannot be deferred to escaped him in Hellraiser he says to her ‘feel free, explore, signification. Channard is the articulation of folding as we have eternity to know your flesh.’ Her submission is connexion, where the self is transformed through a renun- freedom, her search for something eternal exploration ciation of the borders of self, that then cause further fis- and knowledge annexed to infinity, clearly flagging knowl- sures and folds. What Channard’s seduction promises is edge as a refolding that ceaselessly creates new plateaus not dialectic sexual act, but transformation through con- to ‘know’ and transform. The return to hell is a result of nection. Channard’s desire for hybridity is demonic in neurologist Dr Philip Channard’s (Kenneth Cranham) its affinity with becoming-legion, and as hybrids cannot compulsion to knowledge of hell. What he finds, how- reproduce. Channard emphasises the phylic specificities ever, is that the answer is best sacrificed to the infinity expressed with each folding through connections with of unthought, thought which is outside signification and other planes and plateaus, none of which can be predicted takes the self outside the world and within the flesh. or reproduced. When he finally ‘knows’ the way to hell he is face with a Female Cenobite’s and Pinhead’s deaths in Hellbound perverse iron maiden into which he is pushed, there pen- are ambiguously visceral. Channard expels one of his stig- etrated, sutured, his body fluids transfused and his mouth mata tentacles into the cunt in Female’s Cenobite’s throat, raped by a nipple/phallic/orchid-like (hence cunty) pro- from which blood spurts, making unclear from where this jection. He emerges, an effulgent messiah whose palms effluence is emitting, her wound or his tentacle. Because break open in cult-like stigmata bringing forth tentacles the blood spurts outward it is arguably a cunty emission, which open and close to reveal a polyphony of infernal ergo insinuating her pleasure, yet the dialectic of penetra- ephemera: blades, eyeballs from which pins extrude, fin- tion is resonant with traditional structures and it becomes gers and even a flower in a bizarre attempt to seduce the difficult to navigate this scene beyond the apparent equa- young innocent Tiffany (Imogen Boorman). He expresses tion of ‘traditional’ penetration equalling death, where

  her penetration transforms the Female Cenobite back image). What the image means is suffocated by what the into a ‘normal’ woman, replete with make up and blonde image does, which is express the aestheticised and materi- hair. This cunt-wound was formerly the site of a seething, ally affective beauty of the majoritarian refolded, ending bubbling, amorphic language of suffering desire and it is with Pinhead falling to his submission, no longer black silenced through penetration, however this reterritoriali- pope of hell but perhaps open now to Channard’s new sation is not altogether straight forward due to the reticu- configuration of pleasure. (After all, to say Pinhead ‘dies’ lated tentacle which itself opens up. Pinhead’s death is ignores his return minutes later in the torture pillar which similarly ambiguous. Channard creates for Pinhead a cunt emerges at the films final scene). Channard offers the in his throat by slashing his neck. This becoming-cunt is Cenobites a continuation of their folding on a new trajec- all it takes for Pinhead to die. His death could be due to tory, not damming their intensities but redirecting them. Pinhead’s reterritorialisation as a normal man immedi- The viewer’s pleasure at Pinhead’s tragic yet delicious ately preceding his death, where the cunt signifier con- submission to them is not an exchange but a redistribu- tradicts the newly majoritarian man where it would have tion of the ambiguous submissive masochistic relations refolded the former monster. Pinhead as man cannot fold invoked in the cinesexual relation with this enigmatic and so he breaks, however this simple description cannot figure. This acknowledges that Pinhead’s death is as fasci- account for the cinesexual trajectories this scene seduces. nating to watch as his baroque configured flesh when he For the viewer, this scene (cut from many prints of the was ‘alive’. Pinhead and Female cenobite alter the plane of film) offers the fascination of the contradiction of form, consistency through an opening out and splitting within, the majoritarian split open at a highly fetishistic site (here, Channard through the formation of multiple trajectories, not psychoanalytic fetishism but cinesexual fetishism, as which, although not entirely different to his fellow ceno- the Female’s throat has been seducing us for the past two bites, shows another form of becoming-cunt. films), and falling into a submissive pose punctuated with In Hellbound we are also introduced to Leviathan, the tragic yet not necessarily tormented glances reminiscent ‘god’ of hell, a titanic reconfiguration of the Lament of the Female Zombie’s (Dalilah Di Lazzaro) awakening Configuration suspended over a labyrinth. Traditionally, during Baron Frankenstein’s (Udo Kier) frottage of her of course, only the female (Ariadne) and the bestial (the entrails in Il Mostro e in Tavola (‘Flesh for Frankenstein’, hybrid Minotaur) are able to navigate the cunty folds of Antonio Margheriti, 1974). This realisation of ‘death’ is labyrinths. The box itself (and that it is a ‘box’ lends it not one of being victim, but perhaps of the reawakened particularly to its cuntly nature) is defined not by what becoming-cunt, or the majoritarian refolded into another it is, but the unpredictability of what it will do. It is a configuration to continue his foldings, while also failing puzzle box, one which is not ‘solved’ but opened. Both any narrative or redemptive satisfaction for the viewer. As the box itself and its enormous Leviathan counterpart soon as the viewer is affronted with Pinhead as majori- twist and reorient their folds and with each fold shifts tarian any possibility of cathartic resolve is repudiated occur in the planes of consistency in the world, the flesh by Channard’s opening up of Pinhead’s throat, making and desire. When Kirsty first opens the box in Hellraiser resolve or punctuation impossible. The scene which, in Pinhead explicitly makes her aware that by convoking being almost painfully extended, takes signification (a the Cenobites she has opened herself to folding her para- cut throat) into fascination (keep looking, drown in the digms of desire into an unknown (and unknowable) con-

  figuration. He says ‘You opened the box, we came, now water/land monster, a Dragon similar to the crocodile you must come with us, taste our pleasures.’ The sexual (in the grimoire The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon allusions are obvious, however their affiliations are cunty. two demons, Sallos and Agares, arrive, when evoked, rid- Opening the box, becoming-cunt, means these figures ing crocodiles) who inhabits the two worlds of land and whose desire and flesh is an ophidian infinity, ‘came’, sea: ‘Leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that and now as Kirsty is becoming-cunt she must ‘come’ crooked serpent; … the dragon that is in the sea’ (Isaiah ‘with’ them, away from the Oedipal family drama of her 27:1) Isaiah’s is an interesting description of an ambiva- formative phallic life. Leviathan in Hellbound compels lent penis. A serpent is a clear penile metaphor, but not simply Kirsty but all the characters, including the although penile Leviathan does not necessarily behave cenobites who transform into their human selves at the like a phallus – crooked, serpentine (the phallus is rigid, end. Unimaginatively some critics have suggested this straight and not reticulated or defined by its capacity to is a return. One cannot return temporally, so this rehu- move). Yet Leviathan is still a piercing serpent, resonantly manisation is not necessarily a re-phallicisation. That phallic. Job 41:1 offers Leviathan as something internal the humanisation of the Cenobites is not a return is seen with parts that extrude ‘Canst thou draw out leviathan in both ‘deaths’ of Female Cenobite and Pinhead. They with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest ‘come’ with Channard by ejaculating blood as a result down?’. Psalms see Leviathan as suffering because of her of his actions toward them (remembering in these films own multiplicity, fit for food to a bacchic people: ‘Thou blood is equivalent to, and indistinguishable from more brakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces, and gavest traditional sexual fluids). But why does Leviathan par- him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.’ ticularly lend itself to becoming cunt? In the next section (Psalms 74:14) Leviathan has more than one head. His I will shift from the cinematic to the apocryphal and the seats of logos becomes food, reflecting the proximity of literary to explore some more demonic cunts. seduction, cannibalism, food, ideology as nourishment, Leviathan is one example of a demonic form becom- flesh, desire and the creation of thought. Leviathan is ing-cunt. Leviathan, like cunt, translates from Hebrew contagion through consumption, and his wild disciples as ‘that which gathers itself together in folds.’ (Davidson, become through consumption. The biblical apocrypha is 173) Evoking Leviathan welcomes becoming-cunt as a where we meet Leviathan as a female ‘…a female monster folding with that which folds, offering infinite aspects. named Leviathan, to dwell in the abysses of the ocean, Leviathan, even when gathered, (i.e. unified) is a fold- over the fountains of the water…And I besought the ing, thus she transgresses even the concept of unity by other angel that he should show me the might of those presenting as a unified folding, or gathering of dimen- monsters [Leviathan and Behemoth]…And he said to sional aspects. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, published me: “Thou, son of man, herein thou dost seek to know in 1651, was a remarkable philosophical treatise on the what is hidden.’ (Enoch lx: 7–19) Leviathan folds flesh breakaway from philosophy and political logic from the with land with water. She folds as clandestine and to church. Utilising Leviathan as a metaphor for rupture unfold her secrets is to refold one’s place with God. The and transgression of majoritarian power continued the first part of Enoch is essentially about knowledge, creativ- presentation of entering into an affinity with Leviathan ity and thought and their relationship with desire as the as a becoming-cunt. Biblically Leviathan is a threshold ultimate punishable sin, concerning the Watchers, angels

  who fall because they mate with and teach knowledge how Kutulu is the male counterpart of Tiamat.’ (Simon, to the women of earth. Inherently the rethinking of the Necronomicon xxi) Worshippers of Tiamat are associated relationship between flesh, thought and desire becomes with Kutulu, chaos, shape-shifting and unnatural alliances demonic and ruptures dominant ‘Law’. The Watchers as with beasts: angels are pure spirit. They fold spirit with the flesh of [Know that the worshippers of Tiamat] are to be known women, folding the imparting of knowledge with desire. by their seeming human appearance which has the mark of The Watchers enflesh the threshold between man and the beast upon them, as they change easily into the shapes God, or, to be precise, women and angels. This fold of of animals and haunt the Nights of Men…and their books woman and angel is an early example of invocation as are the Books of Chaos and the flames, and are the Books a becoming. The unnatural participation between angel of the Shadows and the Shells…and they are the raisers of and woman is emphasised through angels being appar- the legions of maskim, the Liers-in-Wait. And they do not ently sexless. How does one copulate with a woman if one know what it is they do, but they do it at the demands of is not, technically, a man? Thus, although the union did the serpent, at whose name even Ereshkigal gives fright and result in offspring, there is something less tangibly sinful the dread Kutulu strains at his bonds (‘Book of Calling’ in the union, sinful precisely because of its intangibility of Necronomicon: 97) forms, functions, desires and results. God does not seem to punish the Watchers for their carnal transgression, but Feminine images of shells and shadows, of unpredictable for the imparting of knowledge, in a similar way to Eve potentiality, legion and chaos resonate around Tiamat, being punished as a result, not of committing sin, but folded in the earth and the ocean. As an interesting paral- receiving knowledge. (That she was seduced by a serpent lel, the Magan Text and the Urilia Text of the Necronomicon resonates with the forms taken by Leviathan, Tiamat, warn against opening the gate of the abominations (over Kutulu and other cunt-like deities.) The Watchers are which Tiamat lords) because the abyss, the threshold punished by being relegated to the very cunt-like ‘chasm between heaven and hell, earth and surface and life and of the abyss of the valley’ (Enoch, lv1: 3) death, Tiamat as cunt-gate-threshold, will open and ‘all Leviathan is the Hebrew name for the Babylonian god- that abyss break forth upon the earth and the dead rise dess Tiamat. Kramer suggests ‘[Sumerian] Kur [is] the to eat the living for it is writ: And I will cause the dead to monstrous creature which at least in a certain sense cor- rise and eat the living’ (‘The Urilia Text’ Necronomicon) responds to the Babylonian goddess Tiamat, the Hebrew Where cinema’s becoming-cunt gives us zombie films, gri- Leviathan and perhaps the Greek Typhon.’ (13) The hor- moires and apocrypha show us how to raise our own. This rific dragon serpent ruler of the Ancient Ones (defeated parallel emphasises the breakdown of the most primary by the Elder Gods, the benevolent gods more closely human bifurcation – life and death – when the divided is associated with creation and humanity) is closely associ- convoked not as polar but fold or threshold. ated with Lovecraft’s Cthulhu (called Kutulu in the gri- Although described as ‘he’, Kutulu is a very cunty he. moire The Necronomicon). ‘It is this Tiamat or Leviathan Kutulu is the many tentacled squid-like creature that, like that is identified closely with Cthulhu or Kutulu in the Leviathan/Tiamat, lies dead but dreaming in the depth pages of the Necronomicon, although both names are men- of the ocean, where ‘the water which is beneath the earth tioned independently of each other, indicating that some- is feminine’ (Enoch, liv.7-lv.2: 8) Because his tentacles

  The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed proliferate and emit from the aperture of his mouth these through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea- tentacles could not be described as phallic. They pri- soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked marily defy the unity of the phallus, and the phallus as leeringly in those crazy elusive angles of carven rock where a penetrating, rather than originating, from the folds of second glance showed concavity after the first showed con- flesh which constitute a corporeal aperture. We are also vexity (The Call of Cthulhu, 1994: 94.) never told in Lovecraft or The Necronomicon what these tentacles do (like the disciples of Tiamat ‘and they do The self is inherently part of the folds and foldings in with not know what it is they do’). Their function, unlike the these worlds until all perception is enveloped within a function of the phallus, is not laid down in advance, or plane of Lovecraftian monsters and hybrids, from which indeed, at all. Cthulhu is an example of a masculine sub- the folded self cannot escape and often itself becomes ject becoming-cunt. Humwawa, The Necronomicon’s Lord infected with the contagion of the monstrous other plane. of Abominations, has a face which is a mass of entrails. ‘Then the other shapes began to appear, filling me with The face is the primary plane through which subjectiv- nameless horror the moment I awoke. But during the ity is ‘read’ – gender, colour, race, sanity, even class and dreams they did not horrify me at all – I was one with sexuality. The gendered male white face represents the them.’ (Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth 1994: 461) socially concealed phallus expressed in a visible and hence The terror of the altered familiar is also the wonder at the legible way. It is the zenith of the upright, frontal human, infinite possibilities of the already available not exchanged correlating the phallus with the head as seat of logic. The or repositioned but folded into a multi-dimensional band face is the head of the human form as itself entirely phal- across which becoming cuts a trajectory forming unique lic. Humwawa draws the cunt and the viscera to the most consistency. sacred plateau of the intelligible signified flesh; hence the These brief and sketchy examples of becoming-cunt in becoming-cunt-face is its own form of becoming-cunt. religious and mythic lore are, of course, not becomings as The sigil or seal for Humwawa looks a lot like a vulva, programmes to be followed. They offer examples of the while his brother Pazuzu (the demon who possesses Regan terror to traditional paradigms of perception and form in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, 1973) is described as the cunt instigates in the maintenance of majoritarian having rotting genitalia. Both abominations are male, yet paradigms, and attempts to deliberately transgress those both are explicitly described around their lack of phallo- laws through such acts as magickal evocation, which is centric genitalia and unity in general. essentially an attempt at reorientation of the material self Lovecraft expresses horror in his Cthulhu mythos tales and its creation of perception of different examples of beyond these elaborate inert monsters to the act of per- material form beyond the familiar through a call for what ception and the formation of worlds as non-Euclidean: Deleuze and Guattari call in becoming-animal ‘unnatural Those angles! Those angles! ‘Lovecraft’s hero encounters participations’. This is why demons in grimoires often strange animals, but he finally reaches the ultimate regions appear as reorganisations of familiar forms as hybrids, of a Continuum inhabited by unnameable waves and to alter the intensities, force and affect between the sub- unfindable particles.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 248) ject and the material perception of the ‘demon’ with Lovecraft describes worlds becoming-cunt, folding this which they fold. Where Lovecraft’s Old gods call his hero, dimension to reassemble all perception. demonic evocation and angelic invocation are calls by us

  toward unnatural participation. Evocation and invocation as a capitalist-machine. If will is used purely toward a pre- can be seen as activities toward becoming-cunt because, dictable and repeatable result magick resists becomings in like the act of cinematic viewing described in the previous spite of its potential risks. It can open other perceptions, section, the act itself folds the self into a new and unpre- but it can also seek to familiarise the unfamiliar, turn the dictable configuration with thought become material and becoming-cunt of demonology into a heterosexual iso- internal force extricated and made external. Evocation morphic penile system. Evocations can welcome becom- could be described as the self’s own ability to affect itself ings, however, similarly the becomings available through through an externalisation of force. Cinematic viewing magick are encouraged or blocked based on the subjuga- involutes two forms – television and viewer – into a band. tion of trajectories to points of signification or satisfaction. Evocation and invocation, depending on one’s defini- Essentially however these brief sketches are in no way tion/interpretation of the material constitution of demons designed to either judge or explore the complexities and and angels, is an example where the multiple forces of nuances of these systems, but make connexions between the self as assemblage are recognised independently as various acts the self can launch upon which seem to take at least two or more forces able to act upon the self from risks with the linear systems of phallic culture. They are without. Whether this is a becoming-cunt depends on the also about desire, enfleshed subjectivity and transforma- purpose or function of the evocation. Frequently evoca- tion. Becomings through evocation are becomings-cunt tion is performed for something (information, tasks, John because the threshold between the two entities of self and Dee’s desire to know the future and gain wealth in the demon is a fold, flattening out and creating new dimen- Enochian system). These are not unnatural participations sions. Evocations can launch trajectories creating differ- so much as traditional participations through ‘unnatu- ent speeds and consistencies. Evocation need not seek ral’ dialectics. Cacodemonic copulation, like bestiality, an outcome, and because it requires a differentiation of can block unnatural participations. Although perverse, it perceptions, its risks are also its becomings. achieves results, and can be a parallel to traditional het- erosexuality simply with a non-human but not necessarily non-heterogendered partner. ‘Becoming produces noth- Works Cited ing other than itself.’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 238) A sexual or wilful functional evocation may equate the act The Bible King James Version. John Stirling. Oxford: Oxford with the heterosexual intercourse system and other tra- University Press. 1954. ditional dialectic systems equated with the phallic rather The Book of Enoch the Prophet. R. A. Gilbert, ed. Boston: Weiser. than becomings-cunt. It can follow as strict a repeatable 2003. narrative as traditional sexuality if the roles of each party Bataille, Georges. Erotism Trans. Mary Dalwood. London: Penguin. are laid down before their alliance and an expected end 1962. is produced. In some magickal evocation the retention Davidson, Gustav. A Dictionary of Angels. New York: Simon & of the subject and its powers as inherent must be strictly Schuster. 1967. adhered to in order that the result is predictable. This Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. form of evocation is an analogy of proportionality with Brian Massumi. London: Athlone. 1987. other systems such as science and mathematics, reifying it

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