Reimagining the human: an analysis of the posthuman turn in Mary Shelley, Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson.

Abstract

Donna Haraway has famously claimed that in our time “we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism”. In other words, we are in the midst of a posthuman turn. Even though posthuman has no univocal definition, it may be intended as a way of re-thinking the main tenets which determine our relations with the other inhabitants of the planet and our place in the world. The aim of this thesis is to explore literary representations of posthuman along with the relationship between humans and their “post-s”. In order to do so, it will begin by providing a general overview of posthumanism, focusing on its historical and literary origins, the impact of technological advancement and the following ideological implications. Thereafter, it will focus on posthuman representations within three novels, which inevitably enter the domain of science fiction writing. These are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me go and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods. Although the realities these novels represent are clearly dystopian, they also contribute to envision renewed and re-visioned subjectivities, which we must inevitably call posthuman.