Children of Oryx, Children of Crake, Children of Men: Redefining the Post/Transhuman in Margaret Atwood’s “ustopian” MaddAddam Trilogy

Abstract

Abstract:One of the main pillars of posthuman and transhuman thought is the use of technology as a means to ameliorate human life by helping overcome the flaws and limitations of the biological body. The effect of such trends has been central to the development of contemporary, third-turn dystopian novels in English, published in the past thirty or so years. However, one important aspect of such narratives is also their list of transgressive characteristics, distancing them from their modern, second-turn counterparts. The following article aims to discuss how transgressive the ideas of dystopia and transhumanism that form Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy are, essentially discussing whatever lies at the core of the human condition. Keywords: transhumanism; "ustopia"; MaddAddam trilogy; postapocalyptic fiction.Resumo: Um dos principais pilares do pensamento pós-humano e transumano é o uso da tecnologia como meio de melhorar a vida humana ao auxiliar na superação de falhas e limitações do corpo biológico. O efeito de tais tendências tem sido central ao desenvolvimento de romances distópicos contemporâneos, de terceira virada, em inglês, publicados nos

"Anyone can be a Relative:" Creating Communities Beyond Work Society in Novels From the 2010s

“…In Atwood's MaddAddam, a lack of imaginable alternatives to an all-too-familiar socio-economic system results directly in a dystopian and later on a post-apocalyptic scenario. Critics have frequently read the whole trilogy as predominantly dystopian, but with some distinctly utopian elements (Howells 2019;Jennings 2019;Jergenson 2019;Marks de Marques 2015). The dystopian setting is indeed present in the trilogy, marked by its end of mankind plot, and before that by a society ruled by corporations and divided into those who work for or with these corporations and live in privileged gated communities, and the rest, outside these communities, who are treated as disposable.…”

The Negative Utilitarian Transhumanism: A Case Study of Bertrand Zobrist in Dan Brown's Inferno

“…According to de Marques (2015), there is a connection between the themes depict the issues of humans, science and posthuman/transhuman. The depiction of a postapocalyptic world can be found in Margaret Atwood's The MaddAddam (dystopian trilogy series), where the intervention of technology occurs due to the pre-apocalyptic disorder that includes suffering from climate change and biological extinction (de Marques, 2015). Pilsch (2017) argues the notion of evolutionary futurism which represents the integral rhetorical ingredient in the creation of science fiction in the image of a utopian genre to form a critical dimension of technology, bioethics and the evolutionary future of humanity.…”