AKIRA: The Hybrid Human and the Return of the Cyborg

Abstract

This article discusses the Japanese work Akira (1988) as a symbolic expression of the human-machine hybridism and the crisis of modern humanism. Through the analysis of Tetsuo Shima's becoming-cyborg, it investigates the dissolution of the boundaries between the organic and the technological, articulating concepts from Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Deleuze and Guattari, Althusser, Nick Land and Mark Fisher. Methodologically, the research adopts a theoretical-conceptual and analytical approach, examining the film as a critical device for the ontological and political transformations of the subject in modernity. The study demonstrates how the figure of the cyborg destabilizes central dichotomies—human/non-human, nature/culture, technology/body—and operates as a metaphor for capitalist acceleration and post-human deterritorialization. It concludes that Akira proposes a reconfiguration of the human through the failure of the modern project and the emergence of new collective and hybrid sensibilities.