Becoming Rot
Abyssal Rewilding, Ontological Decay, and Erotic Eco-horror in Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17819130 |
|---|---|
| Authors | W Taylor (0009-0002-9814-7184, University of Glasgow, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-46 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Somatechnics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2044-0138 • E-ISSN: 2044-0146 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/soma.2026.0479 |
| OpenAlex | W7154614099 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
The breakdown of ecocidal and discriminatory capitalism requires the death of the possessive, individualist subject and this subject's corresponding transformation into something other. However, insofar as this transformation is compelled by an impersonal and ungovernable death drive, it eludes the agency of political subjects and cannot be placed in service of an intentionally mapped ethico-political project. Through analysis of Jenny Hval's novel Paradise Rot (2024), this article investigates eco-horror's capacity to libidinise the anarchic transformation in question, which is characterised by the absence of formal and teleological determination. I argue that, in Paradise Rot, this transformation is enacted by an intractable, unpossessable nature that decomposes recognisable subject- and object-forms. This nature embodies a wildness that aimlessly infests and mutates both the infrastructure of human domesticity and subjectivity itself. Moreover, I argue that Paradise Rot effects the libidinisation of this rewilding through the construction of a queer eco-pornography. In this pornography, queerness is correlated not only with a movement beyond binary, hierarchical gender dynamics, but with a subsumption of the human body by an impersonal nature that is absolutely external to human meaning, agency, ethics, and purposes. Thus, in Hval's novel, the human body's entanglement with nonhuman life is foreign to ideas of harmonious interspecies co-existence and repair. The novel moves beyond the limits of redemptive ecocriticism and queer theory, to develop a vision of queer ecology commensurate with Afro-pessimism and Black nihilism's call for ontological breakdown or unworlding. However, the novel ultimately lapses into a phobic narrative surrounding the transformative effects of wildness. While this undermines the potential of the novel's erotic, libidinising aspects, Paradise Rot nonetheless provides the model for an erotic embrace of material and ontological decay whose capabilities and potential effects have yet to be fully realised
Agency (philosophy) · Impossibility · Narrative · Paradise · Posthumanism · Queer · Subject (documents) · Subjectivity · Temporality · Wildness · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |