Kabbalah, "Dybbuks", and the Religious Posthuman in the Shakespearean Worlds of "Twin Peaks"

Abstract

In the series Twin Peaks, Mark Frost, David Lynch and others create a mythological framework structured by and filtered through Shakespeare in a postsecular exploration of the posthuman. Twin Peaks exemplifies a cultural postsecular turn in its treatment of the posthuman, taking the religious and spiritual perspectives to new —and often extreme—heights in its use of Kabbalah and other traditions. Twin Peaks involves spiritual dimensions that tap into other planes of existence in which struggles between benign and destructive entities or forces, multiple universes, and extradimensional, nonhuman spirits question the centrality of the human and radically challenge traditional Western notions of being. Twin Peaks draws from Shakespeare’s expansive imagination to explore these dimensions of reality that include nonhuman entities—demons, angels, and other spirits—existing beyond and outside of fabricated, human-centered worlds, with the dybbuk functioning as the embodiment of the postsecular religious posthuman.