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

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalves, Davi Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Rassier, Luciana Wrege
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Letras (Santa Maria. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsm.br/letras/article/view/29424
• topic: Oryx & Crake; Margaret Atwood; Post-humanism; Canadian studies; Distopia; Pós-humanismo; Estudos Canadenses

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.