Modernist Post-Humanism: The Dialectic of Human Automation and Non-Human Animation in the Quay Brothers’ Street of Crocodiles

Abstract

This article proposes a modernist post-humanist reading of the Quay Brothers’ stop-motion animation Street of Crocodiles (1986). The author pursues two objectives: first, to argue that modernist literature already contains post-humanist tendencies; and, second, to demonstrate this claim through a textual analysis of the Quay Brothers’ animated adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s modernist story. The analysis identifies two interrelated dialectical sets—textual and contextual—connecting the Quay Brothers’ work to the broader framework of modernism. The author shows that, in the film, a dialectic emerges between an anthropocentric, narrative-driven storyline and non-anthropomorphic, non-narrative animated motion. This internal tension reflects a larger dialectic within modernity itself: the automation of human life and the animation of non-human machines. The dynamics between these two dialectics give rise to a modernist post-humanist narrative in the film: while the human protagonist follows a circular path through space and ends without resolution, the non-human animated entities move cyclically through time, persisting into a post-human temporality.