Bodies and Communities in Transit: Neil Blomkamp's District 9 (2009).

Abstract

This paper examines the many consequences of colonialism in South Africa as they are depicted in Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009). This contribution argues that this film is based on the principle that colonialism, like any kind of nationalism, has gone beyond all possible limits: geographical, physical, political, psychological or discursive. Taking into account the film’s emphasis on the dangers and terrible consequences of transformation, mobility, and the crossing of frontiers, this paper seeks to defend that bodies, borders, communities and identities are not considered in District 9 as fixed but discontinuous entities that threaten any established and constructed limit, for the very fact of being in transit. In this way, District 9 demonstrates how the different body may become a border element that links communities. The borderless nature of this science fiction film is used as a means of subverting any totalitarian discourse, including the documentary one.