Posthuman affect in Margaret Atwood’s science fiction Oryx & Crake

Autor/innen

  • Davi Silva Gonçalves UNICENTRO-PR
  • Luciana Wrege Rassier Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148529424

Schlagworte:

Oryx & Crake, Margaret Atwood, Post-humanism, Canadian studies

Abstract

This article analyses Atwood's novel Oryx & Crake (2003) as to identify if and how it sets forth a critique on post-humanism. Therefore, we discuss how the narrative makes use of dystopian artefacts from XXI society as to elaborate on the matter of the interconnection established between human life and the machine. What does the narrative inform us regarding the influence of a post-human society on the environment, on our relation to machines, and on our relation even to ourselves as post-human subjects? It is important to say we shall be looking at post-humanism in both ways: as a moment to debunk humanist naiveté, as well as the contemporary man-made society where the human and the non-human are deeply intertwined. The discussion proposed, therefore, reminds one of the pertinence of dystopia as a mirror to the society whence it surfaces – and especially concerning the new critical perspectives emerging from a post-human dystopia. The fruitful critique articulated by the characters of Oryx & Crake (2003) regarding this post-human future, where everything seems to go wrong, is a response to the questionable idea that dystopias would not be pertinent if one lives distant from the shadow of an overtly tyrannical political regime possibility.

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Autor/innen-Biografien

Davi Silva Gonçalves, UNICENTRO-PR

Possui licenciatura em Letras Inglês e Literaturas Correspondentes pela Universidade Estadual de Maringá (2010); bacharelado em Tradução em Língua Inglesa pela mesma instituição (2011); mestrado (com bolsa CAPES) em Estudos Linguísticos e Literários em Língua Inglesa pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (PPGI/2014); e doutorado (também com bolsa CAPES) na área de Teoria, Crítica e História da Tradução na mesma instituição (PGET/2017). Atualmente, é Professor de Literaturas de Língua Inglesa no Departamento de Letras da Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste (UNICENTRO-PR). Seus principais interesses estão voltados para os seguintes temas: Tradução Literária, Literatura e História, Metaliteratura, Literatura e Resistência, Ecocrítica, Teopoética, Literatura e Música, Literatura Distópica, O Riso na Literatura e Literatura Comparada.

Luciana Wrege Rassier, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC

UFSC-SC

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Veröffentlicht

2018-11-28 — aktualisiert am 2023-05-16

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Zitationsvorschlag

Gonçalves, D. S., & Rassier, L. W. (2023). Posthuman affect in Margaret Atwood’s science fiction Oryx & Crake. Letras, (57), 173–204. https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148529424 (Original work published 28. November 2018)