
The Criterion: An International Journal in English
British Literature
Between Flesh and Metal: Posthuman Eroticism in Ballard’s Crash
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
Sexuality, eroticism, body, machine, violence, posthumanism
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.
