Posthuman Worldbuilding in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robberan Exploration of the Techno/ Natural Divide

  1. Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca
    info

    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

Revista:
Hélice

ISSN: 1887-2905

Ano de publicación: 2021

Volume: 7

Número: 1

Páxinas: 52-64

Tipo: Artigo

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Outras publicacións en: Hélice

Resumo

This article draws heavily on Francesca Ferrando’s Philosophical Posthumanism (2019) to analyse the ways in which the contrast between ‘techno-driven’ and ‘nature-driven’ civilisations in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber (2000), while initially seemingly portrayed in accordance with roughly canonical science fiction tropes, can be made to show the tension at the perceived fracture between technology and nature (and, in a parallel fashion, discourses of progress and backwardness) that has been a staple of classic science-fiction writing. A posthuman critical perspective on Hopkinson’s worldbuilding, with its blend of mythology, fantasy and science fiction, serves to provide a new outlook on sf as a literary genre. Hopkinson’s novel also serves to illustrate how a posthuman discourse on these themes (nature, culture, mythology and science), through the application of Haraway’s ‘naturecultures’ (2003) and the turn towards non-Western epistemologies, provides much-needed nuances to explore these topics in relation to postcolonial speculative fictions.

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