Posthuman capital and biotechnology in contemporary novels
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Posthuman capital and biotechnology in contemporary novels
(Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine)
Palgrave Macmillan, c2019
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book examines several distinctive literary figurations of posthuman embodiment as they proliferate across a range of internationally acclaimed contemporary novels: clones in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, animal-human hybrids in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, toxic bodies in Indra Sinha's Animal's People, and cyborgs in Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods. While these works explore the transformational power of the "biotech century," they also foreground the key role human capital theory has played in framing human belonging as an aspirational category that is always and structurally just out of reach, making contemporary subjects never-human-enough. In these novels, the dystopian character of human capital theory is linked to fantasies of apocalyptic release. As such, these novels help expose how two interconnected genres of futurity (the dystopian and the apocalyptic) work in tandem to propel each other forward so that fears of global disaster become alibis for dystopian control, which, in turn, becomes the predicate for intensifying catastrophes. In analyzing these novels, Justin Omar Johnston draws attention to the entanglement of bodies in technological environments, economic networks, and deteriorating ecological settings.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction: The Biotech Century, Human Capital, and Genre From the "Biotech Century" to "Biology is Technology" Be More Human and Human Capital Theory Genres of FuturityChapter Two: Clones: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go The Disciplinary Fence Species of Discipline The Open Fence The Service Station Affect and Climate Change in "England, late 1990s" The Litter-ary Fence Becoming Posthuman AgainChapter Three: Animal-Human Hybrids: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake The Tree of Life: Species, Evolution, and Patents ChickieNobs: Repugnance and Neoliberal Families Corporate Domesticity: Animals in Heat Corporate Domesticity: Reproduction, Maternity, and Escape Corporate Domesticity: Videos, Bodies, and the Domestic Treehouse Oryx and GenreChapter Four: Toxic Bodies: Indra Sinha's Animal's People Neo-Liberalism, Environmental Technologies, and Human Capital In the Shadow of Human Rights Tragic Accidents and Human Extras The Human Element Ambivalence: Humanism and "Something Different"Chapter Five: Cyborgs: Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods The Stone Gods: Planet Orbus and Planet Blue Unlimited Finitude and Cyborg Feminism Unexceptional Exceptions and Easter Island The Biopolitics of Evolutionary TimeChapter Six: Coda: Genres of Futurity Genre and Bewilderment
by "Nielsen BookData"