Body horror and disease
Body horror and disease
This chapter begins by considering the trope of parasitism, a staple of body horror that has articulated horrors from John W. Campbell Jr.’s short story Who Goes There? (1938) to films like Shivers (1975) and Slither (2006). Beginning with the evolutive origins of this fear and body horror’s political and social transpositions of this trope, the chapter moves on to the wider notion of disease as methodological articulator of difference and transformation. Many body horror texts develop pandemic scenarios, with the body falling prey to the ravages of transforming viruses and the attacks of rabid-like individuals. Perhaps the reason we have not seen another wave of zombie films in the wake of Covid-19 is that the outbreak narrative (Wald 2009) had come to dominate the twenty-first century since the release of 28 Days Later (2002) and Resident Evil (2002) and up until the late 2010s, in some ways anticipating the largest pandemic within living memory. This chapter argues that post-pandemic body horror does not just explore the boundary between the self and the viral/zombie other, but between the personal and socialised body, especially since many of these texts are about the imposition of martial law and the reconstruction of society. Contemporary infection body horror does not just speak to a growing awareness about diseases, but also to its context, a world where telecommunications and fast transportation have both accelerated and invisibilised human, product and informational flows (Weinstock 2020). This has resulted in attempt to re-visualise and re-embody infection, offering the body in ‘exploded’ view in texts like Linda Stupart’s novella Virus (2016), Alex Garland’s film (based on Jeff VanderMeer’s book) Annihilation (2018) and Anna Dumitriu’s biotechnological artwork “Susceptible” (2020).
Cambridge University Press
de Bruin-Molé, Megen
50c0d19d-e9c9-4ad4-9b14-8645139e1ef9
de Bruin-Molé, Megen
50c0d19d-e9c9-4ad4-9b14-8645139e1ef9
de Bruin-Molé, Megen
(2026)
Body horror and disease.
In,
Aldana Reyes, Xavier
(ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Body Horror.
Cambridge.
Cambridge University Press.
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
This chapter begins by considering the trope of parasitism, a staple of body horror that has articulated horrors from John W. Campbell Jr.’s short story Who Goes There? (1938) to films like Shivers (1975) and Slither (2006). Beginning with the evolutive origins of this fear and body horror’s political and social transpositions of this trope, the chapter moves on to the wider notion of disease as methodological articulator of difference and transformation. Many body horror texts develop pandemic scenarios, with the body falling prey to the ravages of transforming viruses and the attacks of rabid-like individuals. Perhaps the reason we have not seen another wave of zombie films in the wake of Covid-19 is that the outbreak narrative (Wald 2009) had come to dominate the twenty-first century since the release of 28 Days Later (2002) and Resident Evil (2002) and up until the late 2010s, in some ways anticipating the largest pandemic within living memory. This chapter argues that post-pandemic body horror does not just explore the boundary between the self and the viral/zombie other, but between the personal and socialised body, especially since many of these texts are about the imposition of martial law and the reconstruction of society. Contemporary infection body horror does not just speak to a growing awareness about diseases, but also to its context, a world where telecommunications and fast transportation have both accelerated and invisibilised human, product and informational flows (Weinstock 2020). This has resulted in attempt to re-visualise and re-embody infection, offering the body in ‘exploded’ view in texts like Linda Stupart’s novella Virus (2016), Alex Garland’s film (based on Jeff VanderMeer’s book) Annihilation (2018) and Anna Dumitriu’s biotechnological artwork “Susceptible” (2020).
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In preparation date: 2026
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Local EPrints ID: 511497
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/511497
PURE UUID: 63fb648d-8dab-4b93-a561-4de16bc64153
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Date deposited: 18 May 2026 16:37
Last modified: 19 May 2026 01:53
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Editor:
Xavier Aldana Reyes
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