Between Flesh and Metal: Posthuman Eroticism in Ballard’s Crash

Peer-Reviewed
The Criterion

The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN: 0976-8165

Open Access

British Literature

Between Flesh and Metal: Posthuman Eroticism in Ballard’s Crash

Abul Hasnat
Volume / Issue
Vol. 17, Issue 1 · February 2026

Pages
677-691

Article ID
2026V17N1032

Abstract

This paper examines how the human body and desire are going through a rearticulation of sexuality under the conditions of the excessive intervention of machines and technology through a close reading of J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1973). It challenges human assumptions of sexuality as natural, stable, and biologically grounded. The paper argues that desire and eroticism emerge as a logical posthuman intervention in which flesh and machine form a hybrid “machinic assemblage”. Drawing on N. Katherine Hayles’s concept of “flickering signifiers” and Rosi Braidotti’s formulation of the “posthuman subject”, this analysis reframes the car crash as a site of coded desire that transforms death, trauma, and destruction into unorthodox forms of pleasure and eroticism. This paper further contends that J.G. Ballard’s distinctive narrative language exemplifies the posthuman condition by collapsing the boundaries between organic bodies and machinic structures. This study contributes to contemporary debates on sexuality, desire, and post-anthropocentrism by foregrounding technosexuality as a mode of posthuman embodiment in late twentieth-century literature.

Keywords

Sexualityeroticismbodymachineviolenceposthumanism

Article History

Received
1 December 2026
Accepted
16 February 2026
Published Online
3 February 2026

How to Cite

Abul Hasnat. “Between Flesh and Metal: Posthuman Eroticism in Ballard’s Crash.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 1, Feb. 2026, pp. 677-691. ISSN: 0976-8165. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n1.46

Back to Vol. 17, Issue 1 · February 2026 The Criterion · ISSN 0976-8165

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