Utopia, Technology and Posthuman Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson Fiction

Utopia, Technology and Posthuman Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson Fiction

researchers:

Laila Bouziane (UvA)

What subjectivities can be constructed in the virtual and uncertain spaces opened by technology? How does the deconstruction of binaries: mind/body, reality/fantasy, male/female, nature/culture and human/nonhuman reshape our understanding of the environment?

In their ambition to imagine societies and ways of being in the world beyond its existing configuration, traditions of utopian thought have always been invested in thinking beyond an idea of the human as it currently exists. With the emergence of posthuman discourse and knowledge(s), imagining a better society requires a redefinition of the idea of the human and a revision of utopian ideals in an increasingly technologized world. This project examines the intersection of utopian tendencies and posthuman subjectivities in Jeanette Winterson’s fiction. By engaging with both utopian and posthumanist discourses in their different concerns, this fiction explores how subjectivities are reconstructed in and through contexts of human and nonhuman entanglements.

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by Laila Bouziane