The Antlered Pharmakon: Gus, Andrej Dúbravský, and the Return of Divine Animality

Abstract

This article reads Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth as a posthumanist allegory of divine animality. It argues that Gus, an antlered child who is human, animal, clone, pharmakon, and god, is not merely a human–deer hybrid, but the pharmakon of the human species: the being through whom humanity seeks a cure and encounters its own extinction. Drawing on Derrida, Haraway, and Wolfe, the article shows how Sweet Tooth links plague, cloning, colonial violence, and species hierarchy. It then places Gus in dialogue with Andrej Dúbravský’s horned male nudes and Zone Blanche/ Black Spot, reading them as three modes of antlering: narrative-pharmacological, painterly-theophanic, and territorial-ecological.