Posthuman Readings of The Last Unicorn: Myth Resignification and Feminine Subjectivity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/fmvmwv30Keywords:
unicorn, feminisms, femininity, subjectivity, posthumanism, ecofeminismAbstract
This article analyzes The Last Unicorn (1982) as a contemporary rereading of the unicorn myth from a posthuman feminist and ecofeminist perspective. Drawing on the historical and cultural context of the unicorn figure, it examines how the film resignifies attributes traditionally associated with femininity. The film enables a critical interrogation of the dichotomies between human and nonhuman, nature and culture, reality and fantasy, as well as the ways these oppositions have historically shaped the construction of femininity. It concludes that the resignification of the unicorn myth does not merely revisit a traditional symbolic figure, but rather opens up alternative imaginaries of subjectivity and existence, with a transformative potential that articulates the personal, the political, and the ethical.
Downloads
References
Adams, Carol J. 2018. "The sexual politics of meat." In Living with contradictions, pp. 548-557. Routledge.
Bass, Jules, y Arthur Rankin, dirs. 1982. The Last Unicorn. Rankin/Bass Productions.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2004. Feminismo, diferencia sexual y subjetividad nómade. Barcelona: Gedisa.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. Lo posthumano. Barcelona: Gedisa.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2022. Feminismo posthumano. Barcelona: Gedisa.
Caillois, Roger. 1982. "The myth of the unicorn." Diogenes 30, nº. 119: 1-23.
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1999. El segundo sexo. Traducido por Alicia Martorell. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Derrida, Jacques. 2006. “Is There a Philosophical Language?” En The Derrida–Habermas Reader, editado por Lasse Thomassen, 35–56. Edimburgo: Edinburgh University Press.
Ellerbroek, W. C. 1968. "The Unicorn: A Paradigm of Human Thought." JAMA 204, nº. 1: 33–36. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/338632
Fraser, Nancy. 1995. "¿De la redistribución al reconocimiento? Dilemas de la justicia en la era postsocialista." New Left Review 1: 126–155.
Freeman, Margaret. 1976. The Unicorn Tapestries. Metropolitan Museum of Art/Dutton.
Freud, Sigmund. 1992. "Lo ominoso (1919)." En Obras completas, vol. 17, 215–251.
Haraway, Donna J. 1984. "Manifiesto para cyborgs: Ciencia, tecnología y feminismo socialista a finales del siglo XX". En Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres: La reinvención de la naturaleza, traducido por Manuel Talens, 263-327. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
Haraway, Donna J. 1995. Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres: La reinvención de la naturaleza. Traducido por Manuel Talens. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
Haraway, Donna. «Las promesas de los monstruos: Una política regeneradora para otros inapropiados/bies». Política y Sociedad 30 (1999): 121–163. Traducción de Elena Casado.
Haraway, Donna. 2004. «Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Posthumanist Landscape». En The Haraway Reader, 47–60. Nueva York: Routledge.
Haraway, Donna. 2016. Seguir con el problema: Generar parentesco en el Chthuluceno. Traducido por Helen Torres. Bilbao: Consonni.
Herra, Rafael Ángel. 2015. Lo monstruoso y lo bello. Editorial UCR.
Jung, Carl Gustav. 1994. Psicología y alquimia. Madrid: Trotta.
Martín, Nadia. «El pensamiento táctil como encuentro entre el corpus de análisis y el cuerpo del escrito: Aportes de Donna Haraway desde el feminismo posthumano». Telar 26 (2021 enero–junio): 33–53.
Miller, Timothy S. 2024. Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn: A Critical Companion. Cham, Suiza: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53425-6
Mohacsy, Idalko. 1984. "The Legend of the Unicorn: An Illumination of the Maternal Split." Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 12, nº 3: 387–412. https://doi.org/10.1521/jaap.1.1984.12.3.387
Mohacsy, Idalko. 1988. "The Medieval Unicorn: Historical and Iconographic Applications of Psychoanalysis." Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 16, nº 1: 83–106. https://doi.org/10.1521/jaap.1.1988.16.1.83
Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Londres: Routledge.
Smith, Dorothy Edith. 1974. “Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology”. Sociological Inquiry, 44, nº 1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-682X.1974.tb00718.x?msockid=26f8e04d1c146f3
Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 1, nº 3: 237–254.
Stryker, Susan. 2015. “Transing the Queer (In)Human.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21, nº 2–3: 227–230.
The Last Unicorn (portada de la película), 1982, imagen en línea, IMDb, consultado el [16 de enero del 2026], https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084237/
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Paula Rivera Calderón (Autor/a)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal accept the following conditions:
The authors preserve the author's rights and authorize the journal the right to publish their unpublished and original works, and to present the articles in different formats (pdf, xml, html, epub, etc). All published articles have a Creative Commons attribution license, CC BY NC SA.
Authors can make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the distribution of the article published in this journal (eg, include it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book).
Authors are recommended to publish their work on the Internet (for example on institutional repositories or personal pages) in preprint version or once the article has been published in this journal, since it can lead to productive exchanges and a greater and faster dissemination of your articles (see The Effect of Open Access). Its recommended to declare if it is a preprint or postprint version.

