Une spatialité anti-moderne des ruines post-apocalyptiques. La figuration du rapport à l’environnement du film I Am Legend

The film I Am Legend depicts a relationship between humanity and the environment that is both antimodern and eschatological. On the one hand, transforming the nature of things through urban artificialization and medicine promising immortality has created a space where monstrous beings cause the extinction of humanity while allowing the return of an harmonious ecosystem which looks like a rediscovered Eden. More than the adventures of the protagonists, the story is organized around the translate between this ambiguous wild space and the one of a surviving human. The presence of monsters implies the impossibility of a relationship between the two and their belonging to a common environment, which realizes the modern naturalist ontology. On the other hand, the salvation of humanity to find its place in the world implies a displacement towards space-time preserved from modernity. Extinction thus constitutes a test of redemption that guarantees life to those who refuse the temptation of urban and medical progress. The denunciation of modernity is then depicted through the spatial figuration of opposition to the theory of evolution: escaping extinction is a moral qualitative leap and not an adaptation of behavior to the environment