2025 № 4 (55)

UDC 17.028.1; 791.43 

BBC 85.374.0

DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-4-724-747

For cit.: Gurov O.N. Limits of Corporeality and Metamorphoses
of Identity: David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 4, pp. 724-747. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-4-724-747 (In Russian) 

Gurov Oleg N. 

PhD (in Philosophy), Associate Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, State Academic University for the Humanities (GAUGN), 26 Maronovsky Lane, Moscow, 119049, Russia 

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8425-1338

ResearcherID: AAS-9705-2021

gurov@duck.com

Limits of Embodiment and Metamorphoses of Identity: David Cronenberg’s The Fly

Abstract. David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) is examined as a philosophical allegory that explores key dimensions of corporeality, identity, and the boundaries of the human. The article focuses on the bodily metamorphosis of the protagonist, Seth Brundle, as a result of a technological experiment that leads to his hybridization with an insect. The author considers how bodily transformation challenges the integrity of the subject and is interpreted through the lens of embodied consciousness, the phenomenology of illness, and posthumanist critique. The study draws upon contemporary scholarship in embodied cognition, philosophy of cinema, and interpretations of body horror as a cultural symptom. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of ‘body betrayal’ and the disruption of established boundaries between the human and the non-human. The Fly is read as a tragedy of bodily decomposition, in which visual shock serves as a means of dramatizing the ontological instability of the flesh. The film ultimately reveals the fundamental dependence of subjectivity on the physical shell and questions the stability of human identity in the age of techno-evolution.

Keywords: corporeality, identity, embodied consciousness, body horror, posthumanism, metamorphosis, philosophy of cinema, D. Cronenberg

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Received 02.08.2025

Accepted 22.09.2025