Discussion of Atwood novel with thoughts on posthumanism, class SFUAD Fall 2016

1. Snowman’s World
We encounter this new world through Snowman’s eyes as he tries to remember words and
phrases, and tries to interpret the detritus of the old world to the Crakers, making up origin
myths and explanations for all the STUFF that has been left behind.
Let’s encounter our own current stuff and imagine it remains in a world where its use and
everyday mundanity is gone. What is the story you would tell about it?
You can choose an item you are carrying with you (let’s try to not all write about our
smartphones, though) or you can choose an item from this box.
These items in the box are my STUFF, so please return.
The goal is to either use the item to explain something about our current society, or to make up
a story that recasts our current society. You choose.

2. Oryx & Crake
THE POST HUMAN EXPERIENCE
FIRST IN A TRILOGY, FOLLOWED BY
YEAR OF THE FLOOD (2009) AND
MADDADDAM (2013)

3. Post-Humanism
Posthumanism considers the possibility that historical phenomena (such as advances in
technology or discoveries about animals) are leading to fundamental changes in the human
species and its relationship with the world. It thus involves radically rethinking the dominant,
familiar humanist account of who “we” are as human beings. According to the humanist model
(a clear and influential example of which can be found in the seventeenth-century writings of
Rene Descartes), the figure of the human has a natural and eternal place at the very center of
things, where it is clearly distinguished from machines and animals, where it shares with all
other human beings a unique and universal essence, where it is the origin of meaning and the
sovereign subject of history, and where it acts according to something called “human nature.”
For humanists, “Man,” to use the problematic gendered term often employed in accounts of
“the human condition,” enjoys a position of automatic and unquestionable hegemony. “Man” is
the measure of all things. Posthumanism, by way of contrast, begins with the recognition that
“Man” is not the privileged and protected center, because humans are no longer – and perhaps
never were – utterly distinct from animals and machines, are the products of historical and
cultural differences that make any appeal to universal human essence impossible… —The
Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory

4. Post-humanism
More simply, posthumanism considers what it means to be human, dissolves some of the
binaries between human and machine, as well as the relationship between being human and
evolutionary biology
Zombies are a posthuman construct.
So are corpses. Posthumanism is also
referred to as transhumanism: a being
that looks like a human, perhaps, but has
abilities that transcend our
understanding of what it means to be
human.

5. Posthuman terrors & pleasures
“The terror is relatively easy to understand. ‘Post,’ with is dual connotation of superseding the
human and coming after it, hints that the days of ’the human may be numbered…
...what about the pleasures? For some people...the posthuman evokes the exhilerating prospect
of getting out of some of the old boxes and opening up new ways of thinking about what being
human means...”
M. Katherine Hayles, “What Does It Mean to Be Posthuman” (conclusion from How We Became
Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics)

6. Posthumanism + gender
As we’ve discussed, binary gender tends to categorize people into roles, and roles tend to create
hierarchies, aka power structures and oppression
Traditional feminist thought focuses on that oppression, on patriarchy and its consequences
You could argue (and many have) that this traditional feminist lens is at odds with third-wave
feminists, queer theory and the like because the latter groups are less concerned with
oppression and more concerned with identity politics than with identification of oppressive
structures.
Transhumanism is more concerned with the fusing of thoughts regarding biological determinism
with the advances of technology and science. In other words, what can science and technology
bring to the desires of the post-binary world?

7. Have we gone as far as we can?
“Efforts to ameliorate patriarchy and the disabilities of binary gender through social,
educational, political and economic reform can only achieve so much so long as the material
basis, biological gendering of the body, brain and reproduction, remains fixed. Postgenderism
confronts the limits of a social constructionist account of gender and sexuality, and proposes
that the transcending of gender by social and political means is now being complemented and
completed by technological means.”
—Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary By George Dvorsky and James Hughes, PhD
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

8. Conflicting schools of thought
The emergence of ecofeminism in the 1980s as a 180 degree turn away from radical social
constructionism back to biological gender essentialism (Sturgeon, 1997) was an
acknowledgement of the inescapability of a biological basis for sex, gender and sexual
preference. The ecofeminists integrated naturalism and deep ecology into their framework and
celebrated the gender binary. In the ecofeminist narrative women's brains and their role in
reproduction made them more nurturant, while testosterone-poisoned male brains just wanted
violence, and to rape women and nature. While a few feminists in the 1970s, such as Shulamith
Firestone (1970), had suggested that reproductive technologies could liberate women from
biology, ecofeminists saw technology as a part of the suppressive superstructure of male
patriarchy. —Ibid

9. Consider the “future” in the novel
Jimmy and Crake live on the CorpSeCorps compound. Current parallels? (keep in mind Atwood
wrote this book in 2003).
Apparently no government, only corporate surveillance. Any current parallel to that?
Jimmy and Crake spend a lot of their time online in some form, and searching for hidden/dark
web content. What about today?
How do you think their environment impacts Jimmy and Crake’s stance toward life? What about
today?
The game "Extinctathon" plays a foreshadowing role in the novel. Jimmy and Crake also play
"Barbarian Stomp" and "Blood and Roses." What comparable video games do you know of?
What do you think about virtual violence? Are there advantages? Are there disadvantages?

10. Biotechnology
In the novel, we see all sorts of “futuristic” biotechnologies taken for granted. How close are we
now?
ChickieNobs
Cross-species gene splicing? Well, we have gene editing and the human genome has been
mapped. And it’s in use.
Shortest video I can find on gene editing.
Biohacking goes mainstream
Other weird shit?
Seriously, this is happening now

11. Fan Art: ChickieNobs (Travis Smith)

12. Of course, we
have
biohacking now
If you could “make” an improved
human being, would you do it?
What features would you choose
to incorporate? Why would these
be better than what we've got?
We have technology for improved
eyesight
Plastic surgery
Sex-reassignment surgery
prosthetics

13. Our characters
How would you describe Jimmy and Crake’s relationship?
What do you think Atwood is trying to say about male friendships in this novel?
What role does Oryx play in their relationship?

14. Homosocial
Concept described by gender theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedwick in her seminal book “Between
Men”:
“Homosocial desire,” to begin with, is a kind of oxymoron. “Homosocial” is a word occasionally
used in history and the social sciences, where it describes social bonds between persons of the
same sex; it is a neologism, obviously formed by analogy with “homosexual,” and just as
obviously mean to be distinguished from “homosexual.” In fact, it is applied to such activities as
“male bonding”…To draw the “homosocial” back into the orbit of “desire,” of the potentially
erotic, then, is to hypothesize the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial
and homosexual—a continuum whose visibility, for man, in our society, is radically disrupted…I
do not mean to discuss genital homosexual desire as “at the root of” other forms of male
homosociality—but rather a strategy for making generalizations about, and marking historical
differences in, the structure of men’s relations with other men.

15. Triangles
Sedgwick goes on to discuss a book by Rene Girard in which he traced examples of triangular
relationships in literature:
“For instance, Girard finds many examples in which the choice of the beloved is determined in
the first place, not by the qualities of the beloved, but by the beloved’s already being the choice
of the person who has been chosen as a rival. In fact, Girard seems to see the bond between
rivals in an erotic triangle as being even stronger, more heavily determinant of actions and
choices, than anything in the bond between either of the lovers and the beloved. And within the
male-centered novelistic tradition of European high culture, the triangles Girard traces are most
often those in which the two males are rivals for a female; it is the bond between males that he
most assiduously uncovers.” —Sedgwick, “Gender Assymetry and Erotic Triangles”

16. Oryx’s life
Taken from her village
Trafficked as a sex slave
What is her attitude about it and
how does that reflect feminist
arguments regarding women’s
agency over their own bodies?