Posthuman Others in Twenty-First Century

Women’s Science Fiction

Angela Andonopoulos

BA (Newcastle), DipEd (Newcastle), MA (Macquarie)

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy (English)

The University of Newcastle

January 2021

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

The Thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to the final version of my thesis being made available worldwide when deposited in the University’s Digital Repository, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I hereby certify that the work embodied in this Thesis is the result of original research, the greater part of which was completed subsequent to admission to candidature for the degree. Angela Andonopoulos Date: 30.1.21

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I cannot thank my supervisors enough for their collaboration and support over these last six

years: Dr Trisha Pender and Dr Caroline Webb, two incredible mentors who have challenged

me to move beyond my comfort zone and have taught me to hold myself accountable to a

higher standard in my writing and research. Trisha, without your involvement in this project I

wouldn’t have learnt nearly as much about how to write for clarity and communication rather

than for validation. What a gift. Caroline, without your encouragement back in 2004 to continue

on my academic path, I genuinely don’t know if I would have had the self-belief or inclination to

pursue postgraduate research—so this thesis may not have existed at all. To both of you, thank

you for continually challenging me to think more critically about my ideas, the mechanics of my

own writing, and most importantly, my arguments. For all of your honesty, time, relentless hard

work, and genuine investment in my project, I am eternally indebted. I am in awe of your

knowledge and the generosity with which you so willingly impart it.

To my English tutor, Peggy Brown, who sparked my love of English and academic

writing, and put me onto the path of pursing the subject at a tertiary level—thank you for the

skills and confidence. Incredible teachers and mentors are not appreciated enough for the

impact they have on their students’ lives.

To my beautiful family who I acquired along the way, I started this project as somewhat

of a lone ranger and now I’m part of a team who have had my back every step of the way. I

started this project for myself, but I finished it for you—my gorgeous boys. Benjie, you have

been my rock and number one support through all of the highs and lows. Your unwavering

patience and “you’ve got this” attitude have been a blessing that has seen me through to the

end. To my precious Banjo and Nixon, I hope that all of the time I spent at the library, my

computer or just missing in action in your eyes, will one day serve to inspire you in some way.

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Perhaps to show you how important it is to really work for something to achieve it, to try and

reach your potential, and to be resilient when challenges come your way.

To my clan—my siblings, parents and closest allies. To my sisters, Leana and Claire, and

brothers, Luke and Joel, and their amazing partners. To my best friend, Amanda. Thank you for

being there, always. For all of the times you told me to hang in there and refreshed my

inspiration. How lucky I am to have a family of go-getters to help keep me motivated and on

track. To my father, Bill, who still can’t wrap his head around why I’d want to spend so much

time writing about cyborgs but has dropped everything if I’ve ever needed it. And lastly, to my

mother, Anthea, who always told me that I can do anything I put my mind to. Thank you for

instilling in me a love for learning and the determination to work hard to reach my potential no

matter what obstacles I may face. I’m convinced it takes a village to write a thesis, and while it’s

quite often seemed like it’s just me and my computer battling it alone, that’s never been the

case.

Acknowledgements must also be given to the Australian Government Research Training

Program Scholarship scheme, which has granted me this opportunity to fulfil life-long

aspirations.

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ABSTRACT

Twenty-first century women’s science fiction mobilises the posthuman imaginary—tropes like the

hybrid, the splice and the technologically created monster—to challenge systems and ideologies

that position certain individuals and groups as Others on the basis of their race, gender, biology

or appearance. In this thesis I examine the different manifestations of the posthuman in five

recent novels by women writers. I argue that each narrative questions the politics of the

embodiment and the Othering of those deemed ‘nonhuman’ as a result of their deviance from

normal aesthetic or biological models of the human. I analyse Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012) as

a young adult science fiction narrative in which the posthuman becomes an apposite metaphor

for the female coming-of-age process, presenting a contemporary example of how fictional

cyborg embodiment is being utilised to engage with notions of anomalous embodiment. I also

examine depictions of posthuman coming-of-age in Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna

Fox (2008), a process that involves tensions between real and artificial, human and machine. I

consider how Pearson utilises the posthuman to engage in questions of personhood and

posthuman ethics, and whether ‘human essence’ can be located in the mind, body or soul.

Julianna Baggott’s post-apocalyptic novel Pure (2012) destabilises associations between ‘normal’

embodiment and definitions of the human: as I demonstrate, Baggott humanises various ‘fused’

hybrid figures and depicts new patterns of Othering emerging in a posthuman world. I also argue

that Stephanie Saulter’s adult science fiction novel Gemsigns (2013) mobilises the figure of the

genetically engineered ‘splice,’ portraying an exploited underclass of genetically enhanced

humans to explore the politics of the biologically deviant posthuman body. Finally, I discuss how

Jeanette Winterson’s experimental dystopian science fiction, The Stone Gods (2007) portrays

repeating cycles of Othering—of nature, women, children and machines—to highlight patterns of

exploitation and destruction. These five novels demonstrate how women writers of the twenty-first

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century use science fiction to present vastly different yet compelling portrayals of how humans

are conceived of in posthuman worlds, offering new definitions of the human that encompass the

marginalised Other.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of Originality ……………………………………………………………………………... i

Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………… ii

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… iv

Contents ……………………………………………………………………………… vi

Preface ……………………………………………………………………………… 1

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 3

Chapter 1 The Anomalous Posthuman Body in Contemporary Young Adult Cyborg Fiction: Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012) ………………………

54

Chapter 2 Posthuman Coming-of-Age in Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox …………………………………………………………………

73

Chapter 3 Fused Hybrids and the Politics of Difference in Julianna Baggott’s Pure (2012) ……………………………………………………………….

120

Chapter 4 Stephanie Saulter’s Gemsigns: The Genetically Engineered Splice and the Politics of the Deviant Posthuman Body ……………………..

161

Chapter 5 Posthuman Landscapes, Bodies and Relationships in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods …………………………………………...

208

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 247

Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………… 261

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PREFACE

My interest in the posthuman began during my Masters studies, when I first encountered Donna

Haraway’s 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto.” This hugely influential text reconfigured the ways

in which we think about human identity, challenging the Cartesian dualisms underpinning

humanism that divide aspects of identity into discrete oppositional categories: human/machine,

real/artificial, human/animal, male/female, human/other, and so on. What struck me about the

image of the cyborg was the notion that identity could be made up of ‘competing’ categories

simultaneously. This idea was new to me, so firmly entrenched as I was in the binary logic of

Western humanism that anything or anybody that seemed to embody conflicting selves

appeared shockingly transgressive. I immediately embraced the metaphor and the idea of living

as a human/machine hybrid—an “odd boundary creature” (Haraway 2)—which held many

intriguing possibilities for conceptualising alternative combinations of human and Other. One

could be human and artificial, human and animal, human and nonhuman, male and female,

feminine and masculine, black and white, Greek and Australian... I shared in Katherine Hayles’s

enthusiasm for the posthuman: “the exhilarating prospect of getting out of some of the old boxes

and opening up new ways of thinking about what being human means" (285). My fascination

with the possibilities for hybridisation and multiplicity in identity enabled me to comprehend my

own cultural roots as a second-generation Greek Australian. It allowed me to reconcile aspects

of my own female identity that had always seemed at odds with one another. I was drawn to

iconographies of hybrid human/animal beings, particularly images of bird/women that feature in

ancient artworks as deities or devils. I fantasised about assembling a scrap metal sculpture of a

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life-sized bird woman—having my migrant father teach me how to weld in his dingy workshop–

partly so that I could weld together the disparate fragments of myself in the process.

While I am yet to undertake this project, my obsession with hybrids has found an outlet

in the world of science fiction. From the beginning, manifestations of the posthuman in the

science-fiction novels I was reading spoke to me as much about the human condition—

relationships and identity—as they did about our future trajectory and the possibilities of

technological advancement. I found this to be particularly the case in contemporary science

fiction written by women, where I observed that, again and again, metaphors of posthuman,

hybrid subjects were being mobilised as analogies for living as a fragmented, marginalised or

exploited Other.

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INTRODUCTION

All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older

forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great

dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology,

and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of

these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is

another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

Le Guin, Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness

Contemporary women’s science fiction has embraced the posthuman imaginary as a way of

envisioning marginalised subjectivity as something other than Other. Given that women have

experienced a long history of living as marginalised Others—“the others of ‘Man’” (Braidotti,

Posthuman Knowledge 79)—who have been silenced, dismissed and oppressed on the basis of

the perceived inferiority of their sex, the literary works of women are an appropriate focus for

exploring Othered bodies, subjectivities and identities. In the prologue of How to Suppress

Women’s Writing (1983), Joanna Russ provides a satirical allegory for the socio-political

methods of suppression to which female writers have historically been subjected. Using the

mode of science fiction, Russ presents an intergalactic parallel to patriarchal culture in our

earthly realm, narrating the processes used by the alien aristocratic “Whelk-finned Glotologs” to

garner economic, social and artistic superiority over other forms of Glotologs, the “Crescent-

finned, Spotty or Mottled individuals” (3). The artistic work of these ‘lesser’ individuals is ignored,

condemned as mediocre, and judged as lacking the requisite ‘essence’ or “proper spirit” (3)

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evident in critically valued works—most usually creations of the Whelk-finned. Russ’s species of

“self-deluded brachiopods” rely on “minor differences” (4) to justify the suppression of minorities,

employing a range of social strategies to control which members of their realm may contribute

their voice to dominant cultural narratives. Of course, Russ’s brief allegory is relevant to the

ways in which the politics of difference has been seized on by social authorities to construct a

range of Othered positions, on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, religion or disability. Russ’s

writing highlights the critical significance of exposing patterns of Othering those deemed

different and continuing to solidify the validity and value of literary works written by women.

Elaine Showalter asks the questions, “What is the relationship between a dominant

culture and a muted culture? Does a muted culture have a history and a literature of its own, or

must it always be measured according to the chronology, standards, and values of the

dominant?” (xx). These questions prompted me to acknowledge that women’s writing offers a

space for us to examine, imagine and experience the subjective position of the Other, and to

reflect on the political power of valuing and unearthing suppressed voices. As a space to

express the struggle for autonomy, a voice of protest, what it feels like to be stripped of worth,

status or liberties, women’s twenty-first century science fiction in particular offers fertile terrain

for exploring the corollaries of global capitalism, ableism, racism and patriarchy. Such fiction

enables us to acknowledge how we are each positioned within complex systems of coercion

and control, and articulating narratives of alternative, imagined futures has emerged as a

significant project in feminist practice.

In 2019, Joseph W. Campbell expressed his view that science fiction is “a literature

directly concerned with the subject’s encounter with the other,” and that “by forcing the audience

to see that encounter with the other and the resulting processes of othering more clearly than

most modes do, the science fiction author asks the audience to be critically aware of those

binary constructions” (3). Indeed, the cyborg, the hybrid, the android, the splice, and the

monster are posthuman tropes that have begun to facilitate the literary and philosophical

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reconsideration of who and what counts as human. An array of different posthuman figures and

forms now populate the fictional landscapes of science fiction, presented in ways that explore

the complex subjectivities of marginalised individuals and groups. Cyborgs have been a familiar

figure in science fiction throughout the twentieth century as writers utilised the genre to

speculate about the possibilities of fusing human and machine into the one lifeform. Artificially

intelligent lifeforms like the android, machine beings that simulate the human shape, have also

been long associated with the science-fiction genre, and like the cyborg, have become a

posthuman trope that is being used by twenty-first century women authors to invite reevaluation

of the politics of difference in relation to human bodies and identities. Other forms of hybrid

figures, which may be amalgams of humans fused to objects, humans fused to nature, or

humans fused to other humans, as a consequence of scientific or technological mediation, are

posthuman in the sense that they challenge conventional morphologies of the human by offering

radically heterogeneous forms of embodiment.

Another posthuman form that is becoming a staple of contemporary science fiction is the

biologically engineered splice, a new lifeform that has been created using genetic engineering

that can be a hybrid of human and Other, human and animal for instance, or specifically

produced to diminish or amplify certain human physical and behavioural traits. Posthuman

landscapes that have become devastated, hybrid terrains of nature and Other as a result of

technological intervention also feature as a key trope in twenty-first century science fiction to

advance eco-feminist conversations regarding the marginalisation of nature as an Othered

entity. Often, posthuman environments in ruin—graphic portraits of the aftermath of the

Anthropocene—are depicted in twenty-first century science-fiction novels as toxic landscapes

that give birth to new and unpredictable forms of posthuman life. Like the unpredictable

creations of genetic engineering, such lifeforms can be perceived as monstrous deviations from

the ‘normal’ biological human. In contemporary science fiction, posthuman monsters born out of

technological destruction or experimentation, possess bodies that either lack or exceed the

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requisite qualities for humanness that are regulated by a brand of Western humanism

ideologically fixated on the presumed integrity of the ‘natural’ human body. Taken collectively,

all of these posthuman tropes operate in the contemporary literature examined in this thesis to

portray alternative forms of embodiment and subjectivity that encompass fragmented, hybrid or

‘deviant’ ontologies.

This thesis examines five recent works of science fiction by women, published between

2007 and 2013, in order to understand how the posthuman is deployed in women’s science

fiction to investigate the politics of the body, identity, and the environments we inhabit. Literature

that explores the possibilities of the posthuman symbiosis of human and Other can awaken us

to actively challenge systems and ideologies of categorisation that place different identities into

hierarchies—those underpinned by racism and sexism, for example. The novels under

discussion here feature representations of the experiences of individuals who are Othered on

the basis of not only gender, but also race, disability, biological difference, class, economic

status, and sexual identity, preference, or orientation. Hybrid forms of identity, whether depicted

as an amalgamation of masculine and feminine, human and machine, human and animal, or a

fusion of ethnicities, can unsettle the mythologies that propagate a desire for unity and

wholeness to make way for new narratives that embrace fusion and fragmentation.

Many theorists of the posthuman have conflated being posthuman with embracing our

affinities with Othered categories of identity, being in favour of fragmentation and ambiguity

rather than unity and wholeness. It sounds glorious, doesn’t it? Liberating. Transgressive.

Utopian. However, while there is an underlying glimmer of hope in the science-fiction novels in

this corpus that such ideological shifts can happen, the overarching and recurring message is

rather more negative. In this thesis I examine post-2000 women’s science fiction written for both

young adult and adult readers in order to consider different narrative approaches to mobilising

the posthuman. I have specifically selected the five novels in my corpus because they all

employ the posthuman imaginary in distinctive ways, for distinctive audiences, and for

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distinctive purposes, to present differing perspectives on notions of normative and deviant

embodiment that influence relationships between human and Other. I argue that my chosen

novels give voice to the subjection and suffering of Othered individuals and groups in highly

diverse ways, using science-fiction narrative as a tool to represent the physical, psychological

and emotional complexities of existence as a posthuman Other. As I demonstrate, existing as a

posthuman hybrid in the worlds of the novels I examine here entails uncertainty and exclusion,

which are common narrative threads throughout my corpus, as are acts of subjugation,

oppression and violence against those deemed to be nonhuman Others.

In our ever-evolving technocentric world, the politics of the body is also an ever-shifting

terrain, especially as new biotechnologies in the fields of genetic engineering, cosmetic

enhancement, anti-ageing and medicine transform human bodies into specimens for scientific

experimentation. As humans today we are utterly imbricated with technology, from the social

media spaces through which we construct our online identities, to the vehicles we drive, the

computers we use to access information, the phones we use to communicate, and the way our

biological identities are classified by our DNA. This is rich and fertile soil for science-fiction

writers, who question the social, cultural and personal implications of emerging technologies

that are beginning to redefine what it means to be human. This thesis examines how women

science-fiction novelists mobilise varying narrative approaches to representing the experience of

being marginalised, commodified or exploited by being classified as posthuman. Relegated to

the category of nonhuman, alien, or even monster, the posthuman figures in contemporary

women’s science fiction give voice to the experiences of subjection and oppression. A common

thread that emerges in the novels I have chosen to investigate is the prominent emphasis

authors place on amplifying the voices and perspectives of Othered individuals. As readers of

these novels, we are positioned to align our sympathies with characters whose differing forms of

posthuman embodiment are the source of intense suffering and subjection.

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While young adult and adult science fiction have more often than not been considered

as quite discrete subgenres with highly distinctive aims and narrative approaches, I argue that

considered together these two subgenres provide a more cohesive portrait of the complexities

of Othering as they relate to different marginalised social positions. Given that young adult

science fiction tends to portray the relationship between the development of personal identity in

relation to the dynamics of family and community institutions that influence the lives of children

and adolescents, this subgenre presents a clear opportunity to investigate the politics of

difference in novels that reflect how authorities intervene in the construction of posthuman

subjectivity. Further, in examining how contemporary young adult science fiction both builds

upon and departs from the conventional Bildungsroman narrative, I have identified overt

parallels between the process of transitioning from childhood through adolescence towards

adulthood, and the process of evolving from a humanist conceptualisation of selfhood and

embodiment towards the acceptance of posthuman subjectivity. Extending beyond portrayals of

family and community relationships, adult science fiction tends to focus more on the conflict

between individuals and broader institutional state apparatuses that operate on a national or

even global scale. Authors of adult science fiction often present the complexities of systems and

ideologies that threaten the personal freedoms of individuals, by constructing a far more

comprehensive portrait of the political, historical, social and cultural dynamics that shape human

relationships and identities.

Campbell makes a helpful distinction between science fiction written for adolescent and

adult audiences, explaining that a central purpose of young adult science fiction is to “reflect

adolescents’ own subject formation back to them,” whereas adult science fiction encourages

readers “to think about who and what they are being asked to other” (5). I assert the necessity

of considering how both young adult and adult subgenres of twenty-first century science fiction

deal with questions of posthuman subjectivity and embodiment in order to thoroughly explore

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representations of the politics of difference and power relations on both micro and macro

institutional scales.

I have purposefully placed my discussions of the three young adult novels in the first

three consecutive chapters to methodically explore and build a comprehensive picture of how

each author mobilises the narrative strategies of their chosen subgenre to present distinct yet

compelling impressions of what it means to exist as a form of marginalised posthuman. In

Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012), Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox (2008), and

Julianna Baggott’s Pure (2012), the posthuman is mobilised to represent the anxieties of

adolescent girls as they attempt to construct emergent identities. This process of constructing

identity is made complex and intensely challenging as the cyborg protagonists’ hybrid,

technologised or disfigured bodies exacerbate their feelings of difference. In each of the three

novels, teen female protagonists provide insight into the emotional and psychological nuances

of struggling to construct identity as an oppressed, Othered being.

Meyer’s Cinder engages the posthuman tropes of the cyborg and android to interrogate

conceptions of idealised female embodiment and heteronormative sexuality through the

portrayal of a female adolescent cyborg body considered deviant by the wider society. Read

against discourses of the anomalous body and disability studies, I argue that Cinder’s portrayal

of a self-sufficient female protagonist with a prosthetic foot and technologised biology, invites

reconsideration of the normalised adolescent female body as wholly ‘human’ and complete in

the movement towards accepting the fragmented posthuman body. Pearson’s The Adoration of

Jenna Fox also deploys the figure of the cyborg to explore the concept of fragmentation, but in

this young adult novel the focus is more on the experience of fragmented subjectivity that

occurs through the transition from human to cyborg consciousness. Typical of young adult

fiction, this novel depicts a coming-of-age journey to explore the adolescent protagonist’s

ongoing struggle for agency within the context of the family institution; however, this

conventional power dynamic is compellingly complicated by the reality that Jenna’s parents

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made choices on her behalf that have irreparably altered her entire identity—transforming her

into a cyborg in order to save her life.

Baggott’s Pure differs from the other two young adult novels I examine in its portrayal of

not only the cyborg body, but a vast range of different forms of ‘fused’ posthuman bodies that

are viscerally terrifying combinations of human and Other. Adolescent rebellion and friendships

are explored against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic landscape that emphasises individual

survival as the primary goal, with considerations like finding acceptance of disfigured and fused

forms of embodiment as a secondary concern for Pure’s central characters. Baggott utilises the

posthuman figure of the fused hybrid to engage in larger questions of who and what counts as

human in societies dictated by dangerous forms of humanist logic. It is this narrow logic that the

protagonists and the novel as a whole come to challenge through the creation of a spectrum of

posthuman embodiment in which even those whose bodies radically deviate from “pure”

standards can be regarded as human. Discourses on the disabled body, as well as posthuman

monstrosity and constructs of power in exclusionary political regimes, allow for a detailed

examination of Pure’s treatment of both micro and macro forms of social manipulation,

technological abuse and mass-scale violence. As these concerns are more commonly

entertained in adult science fiction, Chapter 3 serves as a bridge between my young adult and

adult novels, with discussions that involve both the intensely personal focus on subjective

identity, as well as the broader social apparatuses and ideologies that permit exclusion and

destruction of those deemed Other by authorities.

In the final two chapters, I focus on two adult science-fiction novels, Gemsigns by

Stephanie Saulter (2013) and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007), that showcase

vastly different manifestations of the posthuman, with intensely graphic and horrifying dystopian

projections of humanity’s technological abuses. A core concern of these narratives is the

utilisation of technologies without sustained regard for the ethical and moral implications of

manipulating the ‘natural’ human form. Like Pure, Saulter’s Gemsigns portrays how authorities

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can seize the notion of embodied difference to justify the abuse of an entire population, utilising

the posthuman imaginary to raise pertinent questions regarding the relationship between race

and social disempowerment. Using the posthuman trope of the genetically engineered splice in

her fictionalised population of ‘gems,’ Saulter’s novel depicts how intentional abuses of

technology can be used by those in power in service of unjust social hierarchies, and the

commodification of certain humans whose social roles are pre-determined according to the

needs of wider society. As we will see, both of these novels utilise distinctive tropes to invite us

to condemn technological abuses that relegate posthuman populations to an inferior social

status that enables them to be lawfully excluded and exploited.

The final chapter of this thesis examines The Stone Gods in light of its complex and

often disturbing portrayal of cyborg politics and technological abuse as they relate to sexual

identity, orientation, and the Othering of certain types of human bodies. Significantly, this

chapter also explores how Winterson’s experimentation with science-fiction narrative

conventions, blending in postmodern strategies such as blurring temporalities, recurring motifs,

the fragmented structure, and shifting character identities, allows her novel to explore the

Othering of children, women, nature, and technologised lifeforms in highly provocative ways. In

connecting discourses on cyborg subjectivity, consciousness, ageing, deviant sexuality and the

Anthropocene to the posthuman imaginary, I have encountered a range of theoretical

frameworks through which to examine The Stone Gods as a confronting portrait of patriarchal

dominance taken to terrifying extremes. Although on the surface these novels share many

similarities in their portrayal of posthumanity, through differing symbols of hybridity and

fragmentation, and iconographies of ravaged landscapes and bodies, they all present highly

distinctive representations of posthuman embodiment, ethics and politics.

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“Dismantling the wall” and rebuilding: women’s twenty-first century science fiction revising the posthuman imaginary

Women writers of science fiction have long recognised the political power of crafting

human/Other hybrid characters to make critical comment on the rights, roles, identities and

responsibilities of their own sex. In 1895, for example, Alice W. Fuller published a short story in

a Boston-based magazine, “A Wife Manufactured to Order,” that used a female AI figure to

satirically challenge the Woman Question. The male narrator, narrow-minded Mr Charles

Fitzsimmons, resents the increasingly politically charged views of real women in his society and

opts for a quiet and compliant technologically created wife who is programmed to be nothing but

complementary and agreeable. Fitzsimmons eventually tires of the amiable Margurette,

realising his preference for a woman capable of challenging him both emotionally and

intellectually, the headstrong Florence. Fuller’s narrative engages the science fiction trope of the

android as a feminist act of speaking back to the limited beliefs men hold about the nature and

identity of women, while exposing a void—the subjectivity of women, both human and android,

within the story is wholly absent. Recognising just how underdeveloped or absent the

subjectivities of Othered figures have been in science fiction, many women writers have since

sought to tells stories from the other side, and perhaps stories from the perspectives of

Margurette or Fitzsimmons’ beloved Florence would be those more suited to a twenty-first

century readership seeking to access the subjective voices of the marginalised.

Just as the voices and perspectives of female characters in literature have often been

limited, historically, there have been significant cultural barriers to women writing science fiction.

In Frankenstein’s Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction (1997), Jane Donawerth argues

that the traditional conventions of science fiction “constitute a wall not only to define the

boundaries of the genre but also to keep women out. Women must climb over, tunnel under,

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dismantle the wall — or else camp outside” (xiii)1. During the 1930s and 1940s, the ‘pulp era’ of

science fiction, the genre was noticeably dominated by male writers. The themes of the science-

fiction stories that featured in pulp magazines like Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories were

thought by some to exclude the interests of women. At a 1983 conference, prolific science-

fiction author Isaac Asimov expressed his view that:

science fiction was a male chauvinist field of unimaginable intensity. For one thing, it

was ‘understood’ by everyone that science was not for women. Science was exclusively

male. Furthermore, adventure stories were not for women. They were exclusively male,

too… Therefore, science fiction, which was essentially adventure stories involving

science, was doubly not for women! (Davin 29-30; his emphasis)

Science-fiction scholar Eric Leif Davin asserts that the adoption of male pseudonyms by female

authors was a common practice during the pulp era, and cites science-fiction writer Thomas M.

Disch, who attests to the belief that during this era, very few women were “tempted to fight for

rooms of their own,” with Judith Merril and C. L. Moore being “the first women who did crash the

party” (30). Writing in the early 1970s, in Again, Dangerous Visions I, Harlan Ellison reflects on

the repeated rejection by publishers of Joanna Russ’s first novel, Picnic on Paradise, and

admits, “I’ve encountered ingrained prejudices that are imbedded so cellularly” that the men

who hold them remain utterly oblivious to their influence (270). Ellison goes on to comment on

the pervasive insistence of many in the science-fiction field “that women could only write if they

wrote as men, by hardboiling themselves,” and laments the reality that “by subscribing to the

masculine worldview, we have disenfranchised and even blotted out an infinitude of views of our

world as seen through eyes different and wonderful” (268).

C. L. Moore’s 1944 short story “No Woman Born” is a particularly notable example of

women of the pulp era asserting their voices in a male-dominated genre to engage in complex

1 The subtitle “Dismantling the Wall” has been paraphrased from Jane Donawerth’s Frankenstein’s Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction (1997) as quoted in the discussion that follows.

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conversations about relationships between technology, female identity and male control. Read

alongside “No Woman Born,” Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox appears to both invoke

and revise Moore’s story about a female cyborg protagonist created when the brain of a world

renowned stage singer ‘killed’ in a theatre fire is inserted into a mechanical body. As a woman

writing science fiction during the pulp era, Moore became known for her deeply philosophical

questioning of whether the essence of the human resides in the mind or the body. “No Woman

Born” asks similar questions to those posed within Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)

regarding whether or not humanity should use science to bring life to those who would

otherwise be dead, the responsibility of the scientist/creator to their creation, and if society

would accept a human/Other being or perceive them as a monstrous freak.

While Shelley’s novel certainly foreshadows the messages of contemporary female

science fiction authors in representing the mistreatment of the monster as an excluded outcast,

Moore’s narrative expresses a far more optimistic attitude towards the experience of cyborg

subjectivity. Protagonist Deirdre may be viewed primarily through a male gaze that amplifies her

limitations as part machine, yet the resolution of Moore’s story preempts the twenty-first century

transhumanist turn in emphasising that in becoming a cyborg, Deirdre has ultimately been

imbued with superhuman abilities that exceed human limits. Unlike the twenty-first century

writers examined in this thesis, Moore’s cyborg narrative is focused more on external

perceptions of the female protagonist’s robotic appearance and the absence of identifiable

physical gender traits than on accessing deeper layers of Deirdre’s subjective experience as

she transitions from human to posthuman. Further, from the male perspectives within the story,

evidence of Deirdre's humanness is wrapped up in surface traits or behaviours, like her

distinctive laughter, her graceful movements, or her ability to smoke a cigarette, described in

ways reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vacuous yet beautiful female character, the idealised

Daisy, in The Great Gatsby (1925). Twenty-first century science fiction critics and writers alike

may view the surface treatment of Deirdre’s emotional and psychological experience to be

15

reflective of Moore’s era. Afterall, she was writing rather subversive science fiction for a time

prior to second-wave feminism when the act of openly challenging patriarchal attitudes that

defined female identity on the basis of physical appearance, superficial virtues and mannerisms,

and constrictive gender roles was yet to become politically acceptable. Or perhaps Deirdre’s

repeated insistence that she is in fact human despite her featureless mask, inhuman

movements, and superhuman abilities, speaks to the limitations of observing the identity of the

Other through a patriarchal lens that only sees what it wants to see and rejects or overlooks the

rest. This resonates with Winterson’s The Stone Gods as Robo sapiens Spike insists that she

too should be regarded as sentient and worthy of the rights afforded to humans despite her

artificial embodiment—a perspective with which the novel positions readers to sympathise.

However Moore’s writing is interpreted, it is clear that women science fiction authors have long

viewed the female cyborg as a productive trope for exploring gender relations, as well as social

and cultural perceptions of the Other, resisting the need to write like their male counterparts in

order to have their voices counted.

While critics of women’s science fiction of the 1930s and 1940s have reported that

entrenched sexism inhibited female authors from staking a claim in the genre, others have

celebrated the pioneering women who did manage to contribute their stories. Lisa Yaszek

asserts that while women science-fiction writers met with resistance from their male

counterparts, editors and fans “who disliked their presence in the field,” the vast majority “recall

such incidents as isolated ones” (The Future is Female 3). Yaszek explains that female science-

fiction authors such as Leslie F. Stone have reported far more positive experiences, with Stone

recalling that Amazing Stories editor Hugo Gernsback “liked the idea of a woman invading the

field he had opened” (The Future is Female 3). The 1940s and 1950s has been described as

the ‘Golden Age’ of science fiction, a phrase that, as genre critic Adam Roberts asserts,

“valorises a particular sort of writing: ‘Hard SF’, linear narratives, heroes solving problems or

countering threats in a space-opera or a technological adventure idiom” (195). The valorisation

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of a particular style of science fiction that privileged representations of ‘hard science’ saw the

creation of a continuum that, as Robin Roberts explains, placed “hard” science-fiction narratives

featuring biology, chemistry and physics at one end, and “soft” science fiction, with its focus on

the so-called “soft” sciences of psychology and sociology at the other end (NP). This spectrum

of classification became even more overtly gendered during the 1950s as many critics, writers

and readers saw the “hard” sciences as the domain of men. While this classification is now

perceived as highly reductive, at the time the distinction reflected an existing tendency for both

male and female writers of science fiction to place either science or human relationships at the

centre of their stories. Sarah Lefanu asserts that the notion that certain science-fiction narratives

are either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ must be called into question:

it is too simplistic to say that male writers of science fiction concern themselves only with

technology or ‘hard’ science at the expense of development of character and the

consequences in social terms of technological development. Such a distinction not only

posits a crude sexual dualism—masculine is hard, feminine is soft— [. . .] but it also

denies the connections between the different ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences, connections that

in good science fiction should be made. (123-24)

Indeed, even the most revered “hard” science-fiction narratives of the Golden Age such as the

work of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov still emphasised character depth and considered

concerns including the social and political implications of technology, governance, ethics, and

the nature of the human, just as supposed “soft” science fiction drew from real world science to

lend credibility to depictions of futuristic technologised societies.

Despite the potential limitations of gendering different modes of science fiction, for many

women writers, the formation of “soft” or “social” science fiction opened up new opportunities for

experimenting with representations of alternative human societies and identities. A clear shift

was evident with the emergence of the ‘New Wave’ writers during the 1960s and 1970s, a term

that was reportedly “adapted from the nouvelle vague of 1950s French cinema” and likely first

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applied to science fiction by author and reviewer P. Schuyler Miller as early as 1961 (Wolfe,

Gary K. 62)2. Ursula K. Le Guin, Sonya Dorman, Angela Carter and Joanna Russ3 came to be

regarded as prominent New Wave authors who saw the science-fiction genre as an opportunity

to experiment with narrative form, style and modes of expression, as they “turned to the future in

order to confront social and political issues in [their] imperfect present” (Yaszek, The Future is

Female 7). Both Le Guin and Russ construct fictional utopian societies in which populations of

women are able to use technology in the aim of greater social harmony and efficiency. The Left

Hand of Darkness (1969) presents Le Guin’s vision of a world free from divisions grounded in

gender difference. The Gethenians are a hybrid race of both male and female biological traits

who live in a state free from concerns of sexuality, war and violence. In The Female Man

(1975), Russ’s utopian Whileaway is populated by genetically engineered women who have

leveraged technology to enhance their intelligence and live without the gender based

conditioning that regulate the more patriarchal societies portrayed in the novel.

Utopian science fiction became a mode of writing used by female authors of the Golden

Age to present alternative social models in which the constraints of gender in the real world

could be imaginatively transgressed. In a genre that had predominantly featured masculine

narratives that, as Yaszek observes, “initially excelled in big ideas and impressive gadgetry

rather than emotional depth” (The Future is Female 8), such authors utilised science-fiction

narratives as a means of exploring the politics of gender, race and Othering, as well as the

personal and social nuances that characterise human relationships. Their stories tended to be

less grounded in the territory of “hard” science as they tackled complex anthropological and

sociological concerns. In the introduction to Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, editors

2 Other critics have speculated that science fiction author Christopher Priest may be responsible for applying the term “New Wave” to the science fiction genre before he emerged as a prominent novelist. See Adam Roberts. The History of Science Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006, p. 231. 3 See Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Sonya Dorman’s short story “Splice of Life” (1966), Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1969) and The Passion of New Eve (1977), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975).

18

Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth discuss the appeal and function of science fiction as “a form in

which women writers could tease out the implications of second-wave feminism, with a

particular focus on manipulating cultural structures and hierarchies” (4). The science-fiction

genre gained momentum during this New Wave era as a vehicle through which female authors

could challenge hegemonic social systems and ideologies that they perceived as inherently

oppressive of minorities: those individuals and groups who did not meet or conform to the white,

male ideal.

Jane Donawerth has declared her stance that the writing and teaching of science fiction

by women are “political interventions in patriarchal systems” (xiv). In doing so she pointed to the

legacy of female science-fiction authors of the 1960s and 1970s such as Beverly Friend, Joanna

Russ, and Ursula K. Le Guin, who she argued “have exposed the masculinist assumptions of

male science fiction” (xiv). In this era of science fiction, according to Joanna Russ, the genre

provided a gateway for women writers to “escape from the equation Culture = Male” (Donawerth

17) and develop “myths of human intelligence and human adaptability” that “ignore gender

roles” and “are not culture-bound” (Donawerth 18). Growing up during the 1970s, in what has

come to be called the “golden age of feminist science fiction” (Barr 3), Marleen S. Barr observed

the role of the genre as a “microscope in relation to patriarchal myths” and a “key for unlocking

patriarchy’s often hidden agendas” (4). By this stage, female literary authors like Doris Lessing

and Angela Carter, who were already well-known for their writing in alternative forms and

genres, had been drawn to science fiction by its possibilities as a subversive fictional mode. For

instance, Carter’s 1977 novel, The Passion of New Eve, portrays two hybrid figures who can be

classified as technologically altered cyborgs to critique the patriarchally dictated codes of female

identity and sexuality of Western society. The misogynistic Evelyn is transformed from man to

woman with the experience of female suffering as a violent rite of passage, while the screen

siren Tristessa is revealed to be a man who has constructed himself in the image of his own

ideal woman “to become the most beautiful woman in the world” (129). Evelyn’s transition from

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man, to man created in the image of woman—the image of the female as castrated male—to

New Eve, capable of perceiving through both male and female lenses, expresses Carter’s

optimistic ambition to challenge patriarchal mythologies through the destabilising yet liberating

potential of androgyny.

In the early 1990s, Barr coined the umbrella term “feminist fabulation,” to refer to

“science fiction, fantasy, utopian literature, and mainstream literature (written by both women

and men) that critiques patriarchal fictions” (12). By her definition, feminist fabulation extends to

women’s literature that exposes and critiques patriarchal mythologies using both metafiction and

metaphor. Barr appropriated narratologist Robert Scholes’s theory of fabulation, which he

described as “fiction that offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we

know, yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way” (47), to assert that

feminist fiction can offer “a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the patriarchal one we

know, yet returns to confront that known patriarchal world in some cognitive way” (Barr 11).

Women’s science fiction then gained both popular and critical attention throughout the 1990s,

further dissociating the genre from what Lucie Armitt calls “the murky depths of that rather

intangible, but often indiscriminately used term ‘pulp fiction’ (1) as well as from what she

contends is the “nostalgia and conservatism” of “mainstream male-oriented science fiction” (2).

Contemporary women science-fiction authors who deal with the cultural construction of

gender and the entrenched dualisms that have structured Western taxonomies—mind and

body, human and machine, real and artificial—continue to challenge patriarchal hierarchies of

identity via the production of new figures and metaphors like the cyborg and the splice. In doing

so, these authors carry on the legacy of their New Wave predecessors in their project of

interrogating mythologies that oppress the Other. However, with the emergence of cyberculture

in the 1980s and 1990s came a new set of ideas and images that powerfully influenced the

science-fiction genre. Cyberpunk fiction exploded onto the science-fiction scene in the mid-

1980s with the popularity of male authors such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and later, Neal

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Stephenson (Flanagan and Booth 7). In the fictional cyberpunk worlds of Gibson’s Neuromancer

(1984) and Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), for example, readers are drawn into gritty,

futuristic subcultures in which young male protagonists negotiate violent and threatening

technocentric worlds. As a style of science fiction that has been “populated by young male

outlaws who hack and crack computer networks to steal, manipulate, or erase the information

they find” (Flanagan and Booth 7), cyberpunk has been considered a predominantly ‘masculine’

genre that caters to a male readership. While on the surface, these narratives tend to feature

cyberspace adventures in which an underground ‘hacker’ figure takes on a dark and often

seedy underbelly of techno-corruption, they also provide fertile literary landscapes for

considering the politics of the body in a postindustrial world influenced by AI, genetic

engineering and networked cultures. The widespread portrayals of cyberspace, technologised

bodies, ‘plugged-in’ consciousness and genetic experimentation rather than the old metaphors

of spaceships, time travel and alien life forms, emphasise the value of the body in both digital

and real spaces.

In response to cyberpunk, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw another gendered

science-fiction subgenre emerge—cyberfiction, or feminist cyberpunk, which rose in popularity

with its own set of tropes distinct from the ‘masculine’ narratives of 1980s cyberpunk. Influential

cyberfiction novels including Pat Cadigan’s Mindplayers (1987) and Synners (1991), Marge

Piercy’s He, She and It (1991), and Laura Mixon’s Glass Houses (1992), appropriated elements

of cyberpunk using a range of posthuman figures to present relationships between humans and

technology from a female perspective. Pramod K. Nayar explains that women cyberfiction

authors focused strongly on “the structure of power and domination in contemporary

technoscience,” offering perspectives that differed from “male conceptions of cyberspace” to

illustrate that women experience “cyber-anxiety” in rather different ways (Virtual Worlds 304).

Nayar emphasises the differences between women’s 1990s cyberfiction and the comparatively

‘masculine’ cyberpunk of the 1980s, articulating that while cyberpunk privileges “disembodiment

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and techno-transcendence” as key themes, “cyberfeminist”4 writers ground their narratives in

the politics of embodiment by “emphasising the materiality of the body” as significant to the

female experience of subjectivity (Virtual Worlds 307). In women’s cyberfiction, female

characters in particular cannot simply escape their bodies to experience an alternative, liberated

form of subjectivity in cyberspace, but rather they are firmly embedded in the corporeal

experience of being a racialised, gendered or technologised Other. The characters remain

embodied to experience life as black, woman, disabled or cyborg, for instance, and in portraying

the ways in which their lives are complicated by their Otherness, cyberfiction narratives, like

contemporary posthuman science fiction, explore the individual suffering induced by situations

of marginalisation and exploitation. The emphasis on depictions of individuals denied access to

power in 1990s cyberfiction—“people of colour, illegal workers, handicapped characters,

lesbians, the poor and the homeless” (Nayar, Virtual Worlds 305)—foreshadowed in many ways

the utilisation of posthuman imagery and figures in twenty-first century women’s science fiction

to represent the subjectivity of Othered individuals and populations.

Alongside the feminist science fiction of Golden Age writers, Le Guin and Carter, who

explored rather radical experimentation with gender boundaries, in Marge Piercy’s 1976 novel,

Woman on the Edge of Time, readers encountered a familiar feminist desire to blur the

boundaries between male and female genders in favour of a new form of non-gendered human

identity. By the 1990s, however, the ways in which feminist science fiction authors dealt with the

treatment of Othered identies began to shift. Moving beyond a desire to imaginatively create

visions in which gender binaries could be destabilised or even dissolved, cyberfiction provided

an outlet for women writers to explore a range of different marginalised positions. Piercy’s 1991

novel He, She and It, touted then as the first female written cyberpunk novel, portrays gender,

sexuality, and human identity as fluid, open to many alternatives, and differing cultural and

4 The term “cyberfeminist” was first coined by Sadie Plant in her 1997 publication, Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technoculture.

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religious perspectives. In contrast to its feminist science fiction predecessors that focused on

how the socially constructed and performative nature of gender difference is a burden on female

identity that can be overcome by rethinking the iconographies and mythologies of masculinity

and femininity, Piercy’s 2050 future society is mentally plugged into a vast network of digitally

stored knowledge that permits psychological movement outside of the physical plane. With

globalisation, corporatisation, indentured citizens, and a class structure that serves society’s

most technologically gifted individuals forming the backdrop of protagonist Shira’s quest, He,

She and It presents both the personal and wider political conflicts that characterise life in the

Information Age from a distinctly female, albeit heterosexual, perspective. Winterson’s Robo

sapiens Spike, in The Stone Gods, is reminiscent of Piercy’s cyborg figure Yod, who is

scientifically created as a means of protecting people, and the relationships between human

protagonists and “non-human” cyborg creations in both novels raise questions about how to

assess humanness in an era when humans themselves are becoming inextricably tied to

technology. Despite living in a techno-saturated world, Shira is preoccupied by a particularly

human quest to be reunited with her biological son. Typical of the subgenre that emerged as

feminist cyberfiction, Piercy’s novel depicts a future world that could reasonably be extrapolated

from our own twenty-first century society, deftly balancing the realities of inequality and suffering

produced by global capitalism with the promise that the acceptance of minorities and greater

appreciation for diversity can prevail. The use of posthuman characters in women’s cyberfiction,

following on from feminist authors of the Golden Age, conveys the narrative promise that an

increasingly networked culture in which identities can become more fluid rather than fixed

permits greater freedom for Othered individuals to move beyond societal constraints. The

optimism with which cyberfiction novelists were approaching the posthuman concern of

humanity merging with technology appears to be a clear point of difference to the novels

examined in this thesis, which each focus intently on the suffering and inequity generated as

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technology offers a tool for exacerbating the exclusion, oppression and exploitation of

marginalised individuals.

The figure of the cyborg, for example, featured prominently within cyberfiction to

interrogate the boundaries between human and machine in an era when the emergence of the

internet prompted heightened scrutiny of how human identity can become dispersed beyond the

physical body through digital interfaces. While the female cyborgs that populated earlier science

fiction were depicted as man-made objects utilised in the service of male needs and desires, in

feminist cyberfiction they evolved into figures constructed to explore the experience of

fragmented subjectivity; and as useful figures for thinking through the effects of technology, and

the formation and disruption of cultural boundaries (Booth 33). In their representations of

different variations of cyborg embodiment and subjectivity, Meyer’s Cinder, Pearson’s The

Adoration of Jenna Fox, and Winterson’s The Stone Gods can be classified as cyberfiction.

While this classification is a little more straightforward for the two young adult novels, which

primarily focus on the construction of cyborg identity, Winterson’s novel draws elements from a

broad range of literary genres both within and outside of science fiction to rethink the

boundaries between human and Other. While twentieth-century feminist science fiction of the

Golden Age and cyberfiction era mobilised the posthuman imaginary to express a desire to

negate or transcend gender boundaries, twenty-first century women’s science fiction does not

treat marginalised positions such a woman, black or disabled, for example, as identities that can

or should be readily transcended by collapsing ontological boundaries between human and

Other. In the contemporary science-fiction novels I discuss, social problems are not presented

as emerging from the existence of boundaries in and of themselves. Rather, the writers take

issue with the dominant attitudes and values towards embodied and biological difference that

perpetuate and justify marginalisation of Othered identities. It is no longer up to the marginalised

minority to alter their identity, to subsume the qualities of the dominant, accepted norm or

eradicate those that position them as ‘lesser.’ Indeed, contemporary science fiction novels tend

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to tackle the ideologies that frame “‘difference’ as pejoration” (The Posthuman 17) head on in

the aim of reframing how we think about Othered identities. It is less about escapism and more

about confrontation.

The evolution of science-fiction subgenres that explore marginalised subjectivities in the

context of technoculture has taken place alongside the development of posthuman theory that

critiques the influence of technological progress on human experience. In the introduction to

Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, Mary Flanagan illuminates the value of productively

reading what she terms women’s “cyberfiction” “against feminist postmodern critical theory and

practice” (2). In this thesis I argue that we can also benefit from reading women’s science fiction

against the rapidly evolving theoretical literature that explores the implications of posthuman

politics on the bodies and identities of marginalised individuals.

Alongside cyberfiction and cyberpunk, the 1990s and early 2000s have seen the

subgenre of Gothic science fiction continue to develop. Gothic literature of the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries featured narratives concerned with interrogating human subjectivity,

consciousness and embodiment that have had a strong influence on the science-fiction

imaginary. The treatment of the body in Gothic literature preempts posthuman tropes in

fascinating ways. Science-fiction theorists such as Roger Luckhurst, Kelly Hurley and Dani

Cavallaro have paid attention to the parallels between the portrayal of monstrous, abject bodies

made changeable by supernatural means in traditional Gothic fiction, and depictions of similarly

horrifying, deviant bodies altered by technology in contemporary science fiction. Certainly,

twenty-first century science fiction frequently portrays posthuman bodies as monstrous and

abject5 as a consequence of technological mediation. Writing in 2005, Luckhurst argues that

“the boundaries between the genres of Gothic, fantasy and SF have become looser over the

5 See Julia Kristeva’s treatise, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980), which is most notable for its discussion of the ‘abject’ body as simultaneously alluring and repellent, and a threat to the boundary between self and Other.

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last twenty years . . . the once rigid sequestration of SF from the ‘irrational’ or ‘mystificatory’

genres of fantasy and the Gothic has been superseded” (243). Hurley has commented on the

tendency for Gothic conventions to reemerge cyclically “at periods of cultural stress, to negotiate

the anxieties that accompany social and epistemological transformations and crises” (5).

Luckhurst argues that different eras of science fiction also captured the anxieties of the times,

pointing to depictions of “border violations” during the 1980s that captured anxieties that “could

be ascribed not only to transformed geopolitics, newly invasive markets and disorienting kinds

of technological embodiment but also, most obviously, to panics about bodily purity and

contamination in the wake of “new” immune-system illnesses such as AIDS” (216).

The Gothic elements in post-2000 science fiction appear in the form of dark, gritty and

terror-inducing images of monstrous posthuman bodies. Such bodies often reflect a

technophobic crisis of embodiment as advancing technologies threaten to invade and rupture

the integrity of the natural human body in the twenty-first century. While I do not explicitly

analyse the novels considered in this thesis as part of the Gothic subgenre, the monstrous,

anomalous or deviant body is a central concern of each narrative, where the symbols of

posthuman rupture and evolution are inscribed on the physical body in manifold ways. In both

contemporary Gothic and posthuman science fiction, bodily integrity is continually undermined

and ruptured by technology as bodies are reduced to specimens for scientific experimentation,

are injected, moulded and radically transformed. As Cavallaro affirms: “The Gothic body

exemplifies the phenomenon of ‘abjection’ by standing out as an object of both fascination and

revulsion. What makes it simultaneously attractive and repulsive is the fact that its identity and

boundaries are unstable: it is always on the verge of becoming something else” (xiv). It is the

porous, permeable bodies of posthuman subjects—not easily classified or categorised—that

make them like those of the Gothic. Rather than fantastic processes of metamorphosis, death

and resurrection, posthuman science fiction represents technologised bodies as both

fragmented and fluid. The twenty-first century women’s science fiction examined in this thesis

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has strong commonalities with the style and aesthetic of Gothic science fiction, particularly in

relation to the portrayal of ravaged, abject or monstrous bodies. In Baggott’s Pure, one form of

fused posthuman body, the “Groupie,” is portrayed as abject and monstrous masses of multiple

bodies with disfigured body parts haphazardly melded together. In Baggott’s image of the

“Groupie,” the boundaries between singular bodies are unrecognisable and have been utterly

ruptured, literalising the metaphor of the abject body as porous and permeable. Startlingly

deviant from the ideal of the unified, wholly human subject, these posthuman figures are

threatening in their disruption of predictable and natural cycles of life, death and decay, in

similar ways to the monsters of the Gothic tradition.

Contemporary women’s science fiction has also been strongly influenced by

developments in genetic engineering that have given birth to new forms of posthuman imagery.

With the discovery of the double helix in 1953 by scientists James Watson and Francis Crick,

science fiction began to reflect both the concerns and possibilities evoked by the reality that

human DNA could potentially be understood and manipulated. Margaret Atwood pays an explicit

yet satirical homage to this discovery in her novel Oryx and Crake (2003) by naming the

academy at which Crake’s scientific experimentation leads to the creation of a new hybrid

human/animal species the “Watson-Crick Institute” (96). Michael R. Dohn suggests that

although “the first attempts to manipulate society’s gene pool occurred in the early 20th century

with the eugenics movement,” it was with the development of biotechnologies like recombinant

DNA and in-vitro fertilization that the notion of “directed and deliberate manipulation of the

human genome” began to emerge (4-5).

In 1971, researchers alongside Paul Berg in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford

University saw success in the “adoption of recombinant DNA molecules in a variety of

applications in molecular biology and genetic engineering” (Yi 1). Lars Schmeink highlights this

historical moment as a turning point in fostering “our contemporary understanding of genetic

engineering and its possibilities” and in the production of dystopian settings in science fiction

27

that provide “divergent readings of the possibilities of change and the anxieties evoked by

biotechnology” (9). Schmeink argues that while genetic engineering had found its way into a

small subset of hard science fiction during the 1970s, it was not until the late 1990s that “the

origin point of a new development in genetic sf” emerged (10). Significantly, this is the literary

moment that Schmeink and other prominent science-fiction theorists marked as “the origin point

of biopunk… as a cultural formation” (10). Brian McHale coined the term “bio-punk” in the early

1990s, observing the cultural and literary transition towards the splice as a productive new

metaphor for expressing the multiplicity of possibilities afforded by biotechnologies (McHale

257). According to McHale, bio-punk is a subgenre of science fiction characterised as

“genetically engineered posthuman” science fiction (Schmeink 10). Schmeink reflects that the

beginning of the twenty-first century heralded

a shift in sf away from a cyberpunk imaginary, best embodied in Haraway’s cyborg and

the visceral technology of mechanical implants, body augmentations, and the virtualities

of William Gibson’s ‘consensual hallucination that was the matrix’, and towards another

technocultural expression of scientific progress: one that favors genetic engineering,

xenotransplantation, and virology and is thus best expressed in the metaphor not of the

cyborg but of the splice. (7)

McHale makes a distinction between the threats posed by ‘cyber’ forms of posthumanity like the

cyborg, AI and other forms of networked beings, and that posed by biotechnologically

manufactured posthumans.6 He posits that while “the machine-oriented variety” of posthuman

“threatens the individual human self with diffusion throughout an electronic network, bio-punk

threatens bodily fusion with other individuals… and ultimately, physical diffusion and loss of

6 Brian McHale’s chapter, “Towards a Poetics of Cyberpunk,” in Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives, edited by Graham J. Murphy and Sherryl Vint, Routledge, New York, 2010, provides a useful discussion of the development of both cyberpunk and bio-punk science fiction subgenres; and in particular makes a connection between bio-punk motifs and “classic Gothic-horror motifs of bodily invasion and disruption” (17).

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differentiation” (McHale 257). In this thesis, Saulter’s Gemsigns can be situated within the

subgenre of bio-punk in its experimentation with motifs of the hybrid and the splice, and

expression of cultural anxieties concerning biotechnological tampering with human biology that

irreversibly reconfigures what it means to be human.

As a relatively recent branch of science, genetic engineering brings with it a discrete set

of concerns regarding the creation of new genetic combinations that can produce “nonhuman”

life forms with human aspirations such as autonomy, self-determination and liberty. Baggott in

Pure and Saulter in Gemsigns are clearly interested in these concerns, representing the

interplay of political, economic and corporate interests that crucially determine which entities are

counted as human and which remain confined to an inferior and inhuman category. In

discussing Michael Crichton’s 2006 novel Next, Mike Gane alludes to the tendency for the bio-

punk subgenre to deal with the intersection of legal problematics such as “ownership, patents,

competition between laboratories and corporations” as well as “private ownership of genes

themselves [. . .] a kind of new privatization of the means of production” (801). Gane goes on to

assert that capitalist culture produces a “vigorous struggle between civic regulation and

individual, and corporate greed” (801). These complexities are clearly at play in Saulter’s

Gemsigns, in which the corporations responsible for engineering the gems are primarily

concerned with how to maintain their ownership over the commodities they have produced,

while the gems struggle for recognition as human beings.

The science-fiction genre is continually evolving in response to technological, scientific

and cultural developments, and recent authors have drawn from the literary traditions of

cyberpunk, cyber-fiction, Gothic science fiction and bio-punk, mobilising a posthuman imaginary

to depict new forms of subjectivity and embodiment. Indeed, the legacy of twentieth-century

science fiction is carried on in contemporary works that produce both familiar and new

metaphors to speculate about technologised futures in which the limits of the human are

radically tested and breached. Science fiction of the twenty-first century draws on scientific,

29

theoretical and genre developments to explore the politics of embodiment, exclusion and

alterity. Presenting images and ideas that are distinctly posthuman, Meyer, Pearson, Baggott,

Saulter and Winterson use science fiction as a vehicle to reshape paradigms of normality and

Othering, and in doing so reconceptualise who or what counts as human.

In Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction (2007), science-fiction

theorist Sherryl Vint proclaims that: “We have now entered the realm of the posthuman, the

debate over the identities and values of what will come after the human” (7). This is the realm in

which we can situate twenty-first-century authors of science fiction, who are seizing the

narrative modes that the genre offers to engage in this ongoing debate. Vint’s statement,

coupled with Braidotti’s vision for critical posthumanism which will be discussed in detail in the

following section of this Introduction, situates humankind on the cusp of potentially far-reaching

ideological, ontological and political shifts. These critics call us to embrace a new posthuman

paradigm that provides tools for conceptualising the bodies, subjectivities and identities of

Othered individuals.

Like Vint, the authors analysed in this thesis utilise the “privileged site” of science fiction

to investigate “some of the possibilities of changed embodiment for changing humanity” (7). Vint

and Braidotti share a vision of the posthuman that is grounded in corporeality. Elizabeth Grosz

also contributes valuable insights to discussions of the body as a crucial aspect of female

subjectivity. In Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (1995), Grosz

asserts the need for a form of ‘corporeal feminism’ that engages with the politics of the body to

develop “tools and techniques by which we can think corporeality in all its productivity” (2). Her

essays support the view that in reconceptualising the body as an aspect of identity that should

be embraced rather than rejected, women’s writing can contest ongoing oppression. Grosz

writes: “[o]nly very recently has the body been understood as more than an impediment to our

humanity; and it is even more recently that feminists have come to regard women’s bodies as

objects of intense wonder and productivity, pleasure and desire, rather than of regulation and

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control” (2). Rather than constructing narratives laden with the implicit desire to escape the

physical bounds of the earth or the body to journey into outer space or cyberspace, the works of

recent female science-fiction writers that I study here reflect a desire to deeply examine the

significance of subjectivity that is tied to the body.

Science-fiction authors have also been compelled to directly challenge the humanist

mind/body division, a project that has fuelled the fantasies of so many narratives that celebrate

the transcendent qualities of being posthuman, with characters that can readily divorce their

bodies from their neurology to evade the limits that the body imposes on their identity. While

cyberpunk fiction like Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) questions the extent to which identity

requires embodiment, portraying individuals who hold “contempt for the flesh” (Gibson 9), all of

my chosen texts portray characters whose identities are intricately entangled with their bodies.

On both political and subjective levels, the technologised cyborgs, genetically mutated, or

biologically altered bodies of the protagonists I discuss in the following chapters reveal that in

this new posthuman world, the body has in no way become “an obsolete relic” (Vint 8). Again

united in their aspirations, Vint and Braidotti have affirmed a posthuman position that invites

unity between oppositional categories of identity rather than division, as Braidotti suggests that

we require a vision of the subject and the posthuman in which embodiment is central and self is

seen as something that emerges from community rather than as something threatened in its

autonomy by others (The Posthuman 13). Both of these critics have spoken with passion and

urgency about the demand for a critical approach to determining which forms of posthumanism

will best serve the needs of our twenty-first century world. Authors like Saulter, Baggott and

Winterson are meeting this demand in their complex portrayals of societies in which the politics

of authorities are devoid of ethical consideration and social responsibility. In each of their

fictional worlds, the implications of ethical and moral breakdown are represented through

individuals who must deal with embodiment which casts them as inferior, commodified or

exploited. Vint argues for the value of science fiction that affirms the significance of the

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body/mind connection to subjective identity, while rejecting modes of literature that privilege

“technological visions of a post-embodied future,” which she argues “are merely fantasies about

transcending the material realm of social responsibility” (8). Indeed, in making the failures of

responsibility so starkly apparent throughout the novels analysed here, authors present the

need for social responsibility towards Othered individuals as a recurring theme.

Almost by definition, then, posthuman science fiction draws attention to the ethics of

classifying certain bodies and identities as excluded and expendable. Contemporary women

science-fiction writers make posthuman metaphors literal, using figures like the cyborg, the

splice, and the monster to represent the subjugation of Othered beings. Like posthumanist

theory, science fiction that mobilises posthuman concerns confronts cultural anxieties

associated with recognising ourselves in the Other. Posthuman science fiction that deals with

varying forms of embodiment thus enables authors to enter into debates about how those in

power should deal with the Other. By locating difference and ‘Otherness’ in the physical body—

whether represented as cyborg, AI, splice, deformed, prosthetically enhanced, or fused—

contemporary female writers draw attention to experiences of those individuals whose

subjectivity has been disregarded as politically inconsequential.

Elana Gomel (2014) reminds us that posthuman concerns about the treatment of the

Other are not new to science fiction. She states that “what we loosely call posthumanism”

converges on the same questions “that science fiction has been asking for more than a hundred

years: how do we confront the Other?” and “... what if the Other is myself?” (Science Fiction,

Alien Encounters viii). The alien, after all, has long been employed as a potent metaphor for the

Other whose foreignness and unknowable nature is both unsettling and repellent. The opening

chapters of Octavia Butler’s 1987 novel Dawn provide a classic example of this motif, portraying

the fear and disgust induced by the alien Other who disturbs the protagonist Lilith’s conceptions

of embodiment. Lilith is so repelled by the alien being that she struggles to bring herself to look

at it, confused and repulsed by the strangeness of its nonhuman features. Gomel also contends

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that for authors, the ethical challenge of dealing with the “not human” is intertwined with the

artistic challenge of representing the Other (Science Fiction, Alien Encounters 3-4). This ethical

dilemma of how to deal with Othered beings lies at the heart of Saulter’s Gemsigns, as the

gems struggle to shift the focus away from their embodied differences as genetically enhanced

human/animal amalgams, toward recognition of the vast affinities they share with the norm

population. There are moments in Gemsigns that resonate with Butler’s Dawn, as norm

individuals respond to the ‘alienness’ of the gems’ embodiment with similar visceral revulsion.

Of course, while bodies can be viewed as an ecosystem in and of themselves, they are

rarely dealt with in women’s science fiction as entities divorced from the politics of their

surrounding world. Instead, posthuman bodies are regularly the objects of social scrutiny. They

are politicised and policed commodities that can be placed under the microscope to offer insight

into the ways in which the ideologies of the body politic are inscribed upon them. External social

forces find ways to intrude into an individual’s internal world in order to colonise both the mind

and body. It is through this process of colonising the mind that bodies come to be heavily

sexualised and gendered. This is manifest in Winterson’s The Stone Gods, in which the women

of Planet Orbus unconsciously succumb to the tyranny of patriarchal male desire without even

realising that they are being culturally coerced into extreme forms of genetic bioengineering and

cosmetic enhancement. For Orbus women like Mary ‘Pink’ McMurphy, the perverse sexual

desires of men have totally replaced their own subjective desires. Likewise, Meyer’s adolescent

cyborg protagonist in Cinder internalises the ideals of normative femininity and wishes that she

could conform to the same measures of idealised beauty as her stepsisters. As a nonhuman

cyborg whose body is ‘incomplete,’ Cinder continually struggles to reconcile her anomalous

embodiment with her desires for physical wholeness.

In the introduction to Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (1990),

editors Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sally Shuttleworth explain that there is a strong

relationship between the prominent attitudes of the body politic and the “ideological reality within

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which the subject comes to be gendered” (2). Within the context of patriarchal culture, female

bodies in particular become susceptible to the prevailing ideologies of the time and as such,

“biological and sexual manifestations are coded in specific ways at specific times” (Jacobus, et

al. 2). The bodies of female gems in Gemsigns, for example, bear the burden of their society’s

imperative of repopulating the world in the aftermath of mass illness, enslaved as surrogates in

obscenely inhuman cycles of pregnancy, birth and nursing.

In the fictional worlds of my chosen novels, the female body is not the only site that is

colonised and manipulated by technology. If culture has been historically associated with the

male, nature has for just as long been associated with the female. Jacobus, Fox Keller and

Shuttleworth explain that, “whereas nature, the body that scientific knowledge takes as its

object, is traditionally constructed as feminine, the subject of science, i.e. the scientist, has

usually been seen as masculine” (26). Mother Nature, as a feminised entity, is likewise

considered inferior and ripe for territorialisation. The destruction of natural landscapes in this

regard can be perceived as another violent act against the Other at the hands of humans. The

post-apocalyptic landscapes obliterated by nuclear blasts portrayed in Baggott’s Pure—

posthuman in the unpredictable hybrid life forms to which they give birth—are symbolic

landscapes of the devastation wrought by the partnering of technology and dangerous forms of

binary logic that repeatedly reinforce difference as a fundamental prerequisite for defining

identity.

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Female voices speaking the loudest: from Haraway’s cyborg to Braidotti’s critical posthumanism

To be posthuman is to recognize that we and our technology are inseparable and

that technology shapes us even as we shape it. We are already augmented

beings; now we need to augment our behavior.

Morrissey, “Parables for the Postmodern, Post-9/11, and Posthuman World”

The posthumanist theoretical frameworks most influential to my exploration of twenty-first

century women’s science fiction were also, incidentally, articulated by women. That is not to say

that the ideas of contemporary theorists such as Francesca Ferrando and Rosi Braidotti were

not influenced by the theories of their male predecessors. Of course, a discussion of the

evolution of posthumanism as a field of critical study must include the many significant voices,

of both men and women, who have shared their pivotal views. What emerged as a neat

coalescence of ideas, however, was that the voices of female posthumanist theorists spoke

most directly to the projects of my chosen female science-fiction authors. Before exploring the

explicit connections between the theories and fiction of twenty-first century women, it is

beneficial to understand some of the key historico-theoretical moments that form the foundation

of posthumanism as we know it today.

The origins of posthumanism as a theoretical field had roots in 1977, when Ihab Hassan

wrote,

We need first to understand that the human form – including human desire and all its

external representations – may be changing radically, and thus must be re-visioned. We

need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end, as

humanism transforms itself into something that we must helplessly call posthumanism.

(843)

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Hassan anticipated the emergence of an entirely new paradigm through which human identity

could be conceptualised. This new way of viewing what it is to be human was encapsulated in a

metaphor that has since become synonymous with posthumanism, the cyborg, as enunciated in

Donna Haraway’s provocative essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985; later published in her 1991

collection of essays Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature). As perhaps

the most influential female voice in the early development of posthumanism, Haraway offered a

potent feminist symbol of an embodied human/Other that was gendered as female, while also

speaking to social constructs of race, class and sexuality that depend on binary logic to sustain

marginalisation of the Other. In Haraway’s words, hybrid figures like the cyborg “can suggest a

way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to

ourselves” (181). For many theorists and writers, this notion radically changed the ways in which

we conceptualise and represent human identity.

In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Haraway presented her vision of a potent and complex fusion

of identities, as multiplicitous, fragmented and hybrid. What renders Haraway’s cyborg a

productive image for undermining Western dualistic logic is her persistent resistance of unity

and wholeness and her refusal of totalizing, univocal truths. Irony and contradiction are at the

forefront of her distinctive iconography, which is founded upon incompatibility and the possibility

of multiple truths: “Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even

dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are

necessary and true" (149). Haraway’s cyborg metaphor has provided her with a means of

transgressing what she calls the “devastating assumptions of master narratives” (1), which have

been produced out of essentialising European and American humanistic models of rationality.

The necessity to contest the dualistic divisions inherent in the mythologies, scriptures and

humanistic literature that have shaped our culture underpins the current movement towards

representations of heterogeneity and disorder that permeate contemporary women’s science

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fiction. A central aim of this thesis is to consider how each author uses the posthuman to

challenge these grand narratives.

For Haraway, the fragmented, anomalous nature of the cyborg body renders it

monstrous. The monster has a long tradition of serving as a metaphor for transcending the

boundaries of dominant cultural archetypes. Haraway saw monsters as challenges to social

boundaries, in that what is classified as monstrous or grotesque within particular social bounds

reveals the values and attitudes that culture adopts towards the different and deviant aspects of

human identity. Haraway asserts that the cyborg figure is monstrous in its deviations from binary

order; not only does it transcend the boundary between human and machine, but in fact, it

crosses multiple borders simultaneously. As Baukje Prins suggests, Haraway’s metaphor of the

cyborg “urges those who have been ascribed this position of the ‘Other’ to mobilize its

destabilizing aspects, their deviant sides. As boundary creatures, they actually are monsters”

(361). Female authors of posthuman fiction have identified this active embrace and purposeful

activation of deviance for transgressive means as a progressive political tool. The authors in my

corpus construct complex characters that operate outside of patriarchal social norms as their

bodies are classified as radically deviant from expectations of idealised embodiment. For

instance, as a part metallic cyborg, the angular and shapeless body of Meyer’s protagonist

Cinder fails to conform to the idealised measures of femininity in her society. In Saulter’s

Gemsigns, the biologically spliced hybrid woman Aryel Morningstar is perceived as both

beautiful and hideous on account of her apparent deformity—a huge bulge that emerges from

her shoulders to give her the appearance of a hunchback. In these novels, both the cyborg and

other hybrid figures serve as productive feminist symbols for destabilising patriarchal order. I

consider the divergent forms of ‘odd boundary creatures’ that have emerged in early twenty-first

century women’s science fiction to interrogate the boundaries that signify deviance and

normativity. As another key female voice of posthuman theory, Katherine Hayles assures us

that “the construction of the posthuman does not require the subject to be a literal cyborg.

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Whether or not interventions have been made on the body, new models of subjectivity emerging

from such fields as cognitive science and artificial life imply that even a biologically unaltered

Homo sapiens counts as posthuman” (4). This broadening of conceptualisations of the

posthuman invites authors to experiment with a range of alternative forms of hybrid, spliced and

monstrous embodiment in order to interrogate humanist notions of normativity and deviance.

Scott McCracken’s 1997 article “Cyborg Fictions: The Cultural Logic of Posthumanism”

highlights the importance of cyborg imagery in terms of offering new representations of identity

that provoke us to rethink the ways in which we construct a sense of self. As he articulates:

Cyborg fictions explore the kinds of identities needed to live in the new world [. . .] New

and old concepts, for example, the mestiza, hybridity, double consciousness and queer

politic might all be described as radical cyborg fictions. Each attempts to think through

the problem of the self in the context of a world where cultural boundaries are constantly

shifting. (291)

Indeed, the field of posthumanism now extends well beyond the realms of cyborg

human/machine amalgamations and virtual realities. It is a dynamic, expansive area of

interdisciplinary study that affects a range of areas including, but not limited to, race and cultural

studies, the sciences, animal studies and monster studies. In a 2011 panel discussion, Neil

Badmington asserted that posthumanism has actively “interrogated the myth of humanism by

activating the moments of pollution and the slow slide of certainties that have habitually been

drowned beneath the white noise of uniqueness” (Cole, et al. 94). Considered together,

Baggott’s Pure and Saulter’s Gemsigns offer examples of literature that use this form of

hybridity to question how systems that oppress on the basis of race, gender or species have

been justified through the constructs of binary logic. Both the wretches in Pure and the gems in

Gemsigns represent oppressed human groups who are treated by authorities as subhuman on

the basis of their perceived deviation from the dominant model of the human. Thus, depictions

of these forms of hybridity and deviance are powerful indicators of the suffering and struggle

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that arises out of being relegated to the margins. The perpetual quest for wholeness and unity,

despite an inescapable splintering and fragmentation of identity, is not just a narrative tool to

drive conflict in fiction—these depictions confront us with the mechanics underlying the politics

of difference and the subsequent acceptance of widespread subjection and violence.

Of course, Haraway’s theorisation of the cyborg was not the first time the hybrid subject

has been critically examined to interrogate how we conceive of the Other. As an influence on

posthumanism, earlier theorists concerned with hybridity have offered insightful

conceptualisations of how hybrid figures interrogate historical patterns of racism underpinned by

humanism. Historically, hybrid figures that threatened social boundaries were regarded with

hostility and suspicion, and treated as subhuman as a consequence of their deviance from the

ideal of racial purity. Both ambivalence and contempt for hybrid figures reaches back to

antiquity—the foundations of Western culture—when ancient Greek philosophers Plato and

Aristotle “endorsed racial purity,” “categorically rejected interracial marriages involving Greeks

and non-Greeks,” and denied mixed race individuals positions in high government (Acheraïou

3). Amar Acheraïou explains that the term “hybridity” came into modern usage in the nineteenth

century when Charles Darwin first used it in 1837 in relation to the cross-fertilisation of plants;

and “the issue of biological hybridity and a connected implication of racial degeneration gained

particular salience” as it was “deemed a serious threat to socio-political order and racial purity”

(Acheraïou 88). As Susan Squier outlined in 1998, throughout the nineteenth century, “the term

hybridity expressed mingled attraction and repulsion. Laden with an implicit racial as well as

heterosexual ideology, the term imports into contemporary theory the unacknowledged trace of

that racist past” (365). In other words, humankind has long been influenced by pervasive social

fears of disrupting the purity of classifications attached to categories such as race, gender,

sexuality and species that are made manifest in hybrid bodies and identities.

While in 2007 Joel Kuortti and Jopi Nyman declared that “the term hybridity has a vexed

and debated history,” they also contend that in the context of postcolonialism, hybridity has

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become “a site of transformation and change where fixed identities based on essentialisms are

called into question” (3). These theorists have identified that the social position of inferiority

experienced by biologically hybrid individuals throughout history was “owing to colonialist

ideologies of race emphasising the alleged purity of the white colonizers” (Kuortti and Nyman 4).

Considering that hybrid figures in all of my chosen novels, whether they be cyborg, a fusion of

human and Other, genetically spliced, technologically augmented, or a posthuman monster, are

regarded by the dominant group as inhuman as a result of their hybrid bodies, it is clear that

conceptions of biological hybridity can be viewed as a significant influence on the contemporary

literary imagination as it applies to representations of the posthuman.

Homi K. Bhabha’s work in the field of hybridity can also be regarded as a key influence

on the evolving field of posthumanism. In 1994, Bhabha examined the nature of hybridity in

terms of race and culture, suggesting that it “represents that ambivalent ‘turn’ of the

discriminated subject into the terrifying, exorbitant object of paranoid classification – a disturbing

questioning of the images and presences of authority” (162). Two novels I study in this thesis,

Pure and Gemsigns, offer different perspectives on the ways in which hybrid subjects are

relegated to deviant subclasses as a result of their status as human and Other. Echoing

Haraway’s optimism that as a hybrid human/machine figure, the cyborg represents the ability to

simultaneously inhabit more than one ontological position, Bhabha argues that individuals of

more than one ethnicity can occupy a liminal space between cultural boundaries that permits

the individual to perceive the world from multiple points of view without identifying with any

particular nationality or culture. This symbolic “third space,” Bhabha asserts, is “closed to the

paranoid position of power” and in the discourse of colonisers the “space of the other is always

occupied by an idée fixe: despot, heathen, barbarian, chaos, violence” (143). Bhabha frames

this liminal space as a site of possibility, a space similarly taken up by characters such as

Gemsigns’ Aryel Morningstar, who is genetically spliced rather than ethnically hybrid, but as a

posthuman gem able to nomadically embrace and anticipate varying political perspectives. In a

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2001 article, Floyd Anthias discusses the potential for some versions of hybridity to be “depicted

as transgressive, or as enabling a privileged access to knowledge” (621). Although physically

hybrid figures in the novels examined in the following chapters are most often oppressed and

exploited as a result of their sub- or nonhuman status, there are moments when hybrid

characters, such as Cinder, Jenna Fox, and Gemsigns’ Aryel, are able to mobilise the

transgressive potential of their hybridity.

In his 2008 article, Vince Marotta explains that in the twenty-first century, hybridity has

evolved into a broader concept that shares conceptual commonalities with posthumanism:

“Hybridity has become a ubiquitous idea which can explain a variety of social processes:

hybridity can be located in horticultural practices, genetics, in the discourse of cybernetics”

(295). One of the central connections between hybridity theory and posthumanism is the focus

of each field on the nature, existence and transgression of boundaries. Jan Nederveen Pieterse

asserts that the idea of hybridity is dependent on the “prior assumption of difference, purity,

fixed boundaries” (220). Building on this notion, studies in posthumanism engage with hybridity

in ways that reveal that the politics of difference, identity and the body now extend well beyond

discourses on race and culture to consider a range of Othered positions. Pertinently for my

thesis, Marotta discusses the ambivalence of boundaries as they apply to Othered individuals

and groups who are oppressed, divided and excluded: “Boundaries are ambivalent because

they hinder and enable; they can be the source of liberation but also confinement; they can

provide the conditions to construct an identity by establishing difference between self and other,

but they can also provide the grounds to suppress and exclude others” (298). The posthuman

characters in my selected novels present physical hybridity in a variety of different forms, and in

most instances these figures expose and challenge the existence of boundaries that hinder their

capacity to construct identity on their own terms, or confine them to lives of subservience and

suffering. The cyborg characters, Meyer’s Cinder and Winterson’s Spike, for example, are

perceived by their human societies as subhuman and nonhuman, respectively. While relegated

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to the category of Other, each of these individuals actively question the ideological and

ontological boundaries erected by their societies to exclude them from the category of the

human. Spike in particular deeply questions the assumed biological and emotional differences

between human and machine, to expose the boundary constructed between the two categories

as ambivalent and open to negotiation.

Interestingly, Marotta distinguishes between subjects who are limited by their hybrid

status, and those who utilise their markers of deviance to their own advantage. According to

Marotta, the latter is a form of hybridity that arises when the individual selectively activates

aspects of their deviance to exploit their position as Other for their own benefit. Marotta

suggests that this position can provide a platform for the negation of duality as boundaries are

exposed and subsequently broken down: “Savage hybrids apparently undermine the ‘binary

oppositions’ or the either/or identity which are the foundational basis of the ‘Western’ conception

of personhood” (307). In contemporary texts such as The Stone Gods and Gemsigns, these

different forms of hybrid, deviant figures facilitate a breakdown of existing structures to make

way for new mythologies and symbols that offer liberation from singular, static definitions of

human identity.

While historically, hybridity has served as a precursor to posthumanism in its emphasis

on patterns of Othering that stem from the Western humanist dialectic of idealised purity and

deviance, in the twenty-first century posthumanism has continued to evolve into a discrete field.

Contemporary posthumanism takes a broader approach to the politics of Othering than

postcolonial hybridity discourses, opening discussions of how different groups and individuals

are excluded or oppressed by virtue of not only their race or culture, but also on the basis of

gender, disability or alternative forms of embodied “deviance.” Alongside Haraway, the ideas of

twenty-first century female theorists have been most pertinent to my examination of the

women’s science fiction discussed in this thesis. Over the last decade, posthumanism has come

to be recognised as a critical framework and field of knowledge that does not necessarily follow

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on from humanism, but directly confronts its assumptions regarding how we define the human.

As Anya Heise-von der Lippe asserts, “the ‘post’ in ‘posthumanism’ does . . . not refer to an

entirely temporal relation but rather suggests a close engagement with and a challenging of the

critical paradigms of humanism” (3). The limits and flaws of Western humanism have been

called into question by posthumanists who seek to expose not only the stifling logic of dualistic

reasoning and anthropocentrism, but also the diversity of identities that are ignored and

excluded by its equation: human = white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, wealthy and

educated. Indeed, Othered individuals who have historically been excluded from this equation

have found themselves marginalised with often horrific consequences. It is part of the project of

posthumanism to bring these individuals back in from the margins—to grant them a voice,

agency and human status as equals. Posthumanism is interested in reclaiming those deemed

Other to include them under the banner of the human, regardless of their biological or embodied

deviance from the status quo.

In her 2019 work Philosophical Posthumanism, Francesca Ferrando poses the question

“Of which ‘human’ is the posthuman a ‘post’?” (20), pointing out that throughout Western history

recognising the human status of Othered individuals and groups “has been regularly switched

on and off” and “the concept of the “human” has been reinscribed within categories marked by

exclusionary practices” (20). I contend that the development of posthumanism as a growing field

of study over the past few decades signals a necessary epistemological and ontological shift as

the humanism of the Enlightenment has been exposed as selective and biased in its

exclusionary assessment of who counts as human. Essentialising notions of the human as

exceptional and distinct from its many Others—whether they be woman, nature, alien, slave or

animal, to name a few categories—have been exposed by posthumanism as culturally specific

illusions masquerading as inalienable universal fact. The texts in my corpus offer

representations of the posthuman that dismantle these essentialising humanist assumptions by

suggesting that human cannot be clearly distinguished from Other. Using different narrative

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techniques, the novels scrutinise conventional definitions of the discrete human, calling into

question how dominant human groups reinforce difference as a justification for exclusion. For

example, this concern is dramatised in The Adoration of Jenna Fox, in which Pearson

constructs a deeply introspective first-person cyborg narrator to question the assumption that

the rational mind is crucial to determining the boundary between human and Other. By contrast,

in Gemsigns, we see that gemtech authorities present possible behavioural deviations from

human norms as a justification for continuing to cast the posthuman gems as Other. Meanwhile,

in The Stone Gods, the Robo sapiens, Spike, continually questions whether the capacity to

experience emotion can really be utilised as a valid justification for Othering machines, arguing

that affinities are more important than identifying and reinforcing patterns of difference.

Cary Wolfe describes posthumanism as “a new mode of thought that comes after the

cultural repressions and fantasies, the philosophical protocols and evasions, of humanism as a

historically specific phenomenon” (xv-xvi), an argument that points to the capacity for

posthuman thought to redefine the human by its always, already existing imbrication with

Others. As Heise-von der Lippe contends, “the fictional contemplation of posthuman

possibilities” arises “out of the necessity to come to terms with the ubiquity of the posthuman

Other which is also a part of ourselves” (4). The twenty-first century women’s science fiction

examined in this thesis thoroughly engages with this posthuman project of embracing not only

those Others silenced, forgotten and repressed by their societies, but also the Othered aspects

of the individual self.

The reconceptualisation of human relationships and identities by current female

posthumanist theorists is aimed at recognition of Othered perspectives and identities. Rosi

Braidotti is one of these theorists, and her distinctive brand of ‘critical posthumanism’ conceives

of the field of posthumanism as a study of the varying forms of Othering that have arisen out of

humanism’s tendency to overlook, displace and exploit certain groups. Braidotti’s treatment of

the posthuman subject is as productive in relation to theorisation of the politics of difference in

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techno-cultures as Haraway’s vision of the cyborg. In The Posthuman (2013), Braidotti identifies

the “perverse form of the posthuman” that is engendered by “advanced capitalism and its bio-

genetic technologies” (10). Building on Haraway’s cyborg vision, Braidotti’s posthuman theory

challenges Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism, and is emblematic of her self-proclaimed anti-

humanist heritage as a theorist. The flawed “universalistic posture” of humanism and its

characteristic dualisms frames “‘difference’ as pejoration” (The Posthuman 17), Braidotti

asserts: “In so far as difference spells inferiority, it acquires both essentialist and lethal

connotations for people who get branded as ‘others’. These are the sexualized, racialized, and

naturalized others, who are reduced to the less than human status of disposable bodies” (The

Posthuman 17). As she notes, advanced capitalist society exacerbates this dynamic, when

notions of difference are reinforced for the benefit of those in power. Braidotti’s work directly

challenges the perspective that certain categories of identity are different and therefore inferior

or less than human—the cornerstone of hierarchical logic and patterns of thinking that serve to

sustain systematic oppression and exploitation of Othered groups.

Braidotti describes advanced capitalism as “a spinning machine that actively produces

differences for the sake of commodification” (The Posthuman 46), to stress that the paradigm of

humanism underpinned by Cartesian binaries supports and feeds this machine. Viewed from

this perspective, cultural constructions of difference and sameness can be seen as a source of

power that those who deem themselves superior can draw upon to maintain their social position

at the summit. Or as Braidotti puts it, “the dialectics of otherness is the inner engine of humanist

Man’s power, who assigns difference on a hierarchical scale as a tool of governance” (The

Posthuman 52). Only those who are socially recognised as in keeping with the standardised

model of male, white, normal, youthful, healthy and whole are considered as subjects, while “all

other modes of embodiment are cast out of the subject position” (The Posthuman 52). These

Othered individuals—with diseased, disabled or deformed bodies, or bodies that ‘exceed’

normative limits—are in Braidotti’s words, “pathologized and cast out of normality, on the side of

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anomaly, deviance, monstrosity and bestiality” (The Posthuman 52). These descriptions of

Othered identities resonate with the representations of posthuman Others in the novels of

contemporary women science-fiction authors like Meyer, Baggott and Saulter. These writers

emphasise the perceived anomalousness and monstrosity of their characters to explore the

politics of difference from the marginalised perspective of the Other. Notably, these authors

restore such figures to the subject position so that we as readers can access the subjective

anxieties and desires of social exiles regarded as subhuman inferiors within the fictional worlds

they inhabit.

Significantly, Braidotti equates humanist logic with Europe’s history of colonial conquest,

where those positioned as other experienced “lethal exclusions and fatal disqualifications” (The

Posthuman 16) as a consequence of them not meeting a “systematized standard of

recognizability — of Sameness — by which all others can be assessed, regulated and allotted

to a designated social location” (The Posthuman 24). The category of the ‘normal human’

becomes a convention and instrument for determining which identities are included or excluded.

The standardisation of human identity so that it can be readily defined and assessed meant that,

under the banner of humanism, different life forms could be segregated on both ideological and

physical planes. In accentuating differences between certain beings, rather than the similarities,

inter-relationality and affinities, those in power were able to justify their oppression of racialised,

sexualised or naturalised others (The Posthuman 25). In reference to racialised others, Braidotti

argues that the reduction of non-Western others to sub-human status is “a constitutive source of

ignorance, falsity and bad consciousness for the dominant subject who is responsible for their

epistemic as well as social de-humanization” (The Posthuman 24). In reference to gender, she

identifies the fact that her personal status as a female places her “on the side of ‘Otherness’,

understood as pejorative difference, or being-worth-less-than” (The Posthuman 61), inferior as a

result of her perceived deviance from the dominant ideal of male.

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If the Vitruvian Man—the archetypal model of classical humanism—is positioned at the

apex of the social hierarchy, then all other identities can be measured against this ideal by

degrees of difference. On this spectrum, sameness on the basis of race, gender or biology

means superiority, while difference means being positioned lower in the “hierarchical scale”

(The Posthuman 24). Braidotti’s posthumanism directly challenges the political economy of

difference, particularly levelled at the economies of phallogocentrism and anthropocentric

humanism. In doing so, she seeks to expose the fallacy that the ideological paradigms

underpinning Western patriarchal societies are grounded in a stable, universalistic reality (The

Posthuman 61). This points to a key distinction between humanism and Braidotti’s brand of

posthumanism, which espouses both the value and necessity of posthuman relations that are

characterised by the “inter-relation” of human and other “as constitutive of the identity of each”

(The Posthuman 60), as opposed to the two categories being regarded as binary opposites.

Braidotti explains that this type of “transformative or symbolic relation” effectively renders

categories of difference as impotent in that it “hybridizes and alters the ‘nature’ of each one and

foregrounds the middle grounds of their interaction” (The Posthuman 60).

Crucial to Braidotti’s revisioning of the posthuman is her call for “a vitalist view of the

technologically bio-mediated other” (The Posthuman 68). Drawing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix

Guattari’s conception of ‘becoming-machine,’ Braidotti believes that we can attempt to firstly

“rethink our bodies as part of a nature-culture continuum” and secondly set new frameworks “of

recomposition of bodily materiality in directions diametrically opposed to the spurious efficiency

and ruthless opportunism of advanced capitalism” (The Posthuman 68). While these transitions

would appear to be primarily concerned with liberation from the constraints of binary

categorisation, they are just as much about strengthening affinities with alternative modes of

being as it is about breaking free from restrictive identities. At the heart of this vision of the

posthuman condition is the merging of human and Other to affect symbiosis and kinship;

coalescence and unity grounded in a firm belief that our interrelationality with and mutual

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dependency on other beings offers far more valuable definitions of identity than political

economies of difference. This posthumanist position is mobilised most notably in Winterson’s

The Stone Gods, as the narrative proposes that love between human and machine characters

produces a symbiotic relationship that can overcome perceived ontological differences. In a

different manner, Baggott’s Pure presents fusions of human and Other that force individuals to

embrace animals, objects or other people as part of themselves, a process portrayed as

psychologically and emotionally challenging yet possible.

Discussing Braidotti’s posthuman ethics, Judith Butler asserts that “the problem… is how

best to take up, or further, new forms of becoming, understood as the reassembling of relations,

in a critical response to toxic forms” (36), a project that I argue is being embraced through the

novels examined in this thesis. Butler’s interpretation of Braidotti’s vision provides insight into

how contemporary theorists are conceptualising the posthuman project as it relates to our

twenty-first century context. Butler sees the embrace of multiplicity as a necessary political

project that can be aided by posthuman thinking and imagery, as she articulates: “Overcoming

segregated forms of life ought ideally to lead to multiplicity, not the restoration of some imagined

unified order. So, as I read Braidotti, fragmentation is what has to be resisted, precisely as

multiplicity must be affirmed” (37). In the works of science fiction examined in this thesis, the

experience of fragmentation is represented as a direct result of being cast as an inferior Other.

The posthuman characters in these novels can only transcend their subjection and eventually

find social inclusion, reconciliation and self-acceptance when their status as hybrid or plural is

accommodated by the wider society.

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Chapter overviews

In Chapter 1 of this thesis, I examine Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012) as a young adult science-

fiction narrative in which the posthuman becomes a particularly apposite metaphor for the

female coming-of-age process. The novel presents a contemporary example of how fictional

cyborg embodiment is being utilised to engage with notions of deviant and anomalous

embodiment. This chapter explores how protagonist Cinder’s struggle to come to terms with her

anomalous cyborg body sheds light on the process of constructing identity throughout

adolescence—a period when grappling with embodied difference becomes a significant source

of anxiety for many. I examine the ways in which Cinder’s hybrid human and machine body

situates her as part of an Othered and subservient underclass within her society, New Beijing.

Cinder lucidly illustrates that being identified as hybrid can place one in a disenfranchising

position, heightening awareness of the politics of difference in young adult readers who

recognise that cyborg status is equated with being subhuman and therefore deprives individuals

of agency. In analysing Meyer’s portrayal of a cyborg protagonist who challenges ideals of

human wholeness, physical purity, and the hierarchical order of her society, I argue that the

novel provides insight into the complexities of both the dangers and potentialities of liminality.

Similarly, Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox (2008) depicts the

Bildungsroman of its posthuman protagonist. In Chapter 2, I consider the interior journey of the

adolescent Jenna Fox who wakes up after a tragic accident in a synthetic body with no

recollection of her former identity. I examine Pearson’s construction of Jenna as a posthuman

figure who is not only Other to other people within the world of the novel, but also to herself. My

analysis focuses on Jenna’s quest for self-understanding as she attempts to piece together a

new sense of identity—a goal that is complicated by her desire to recover the parts of her

selfhood that were lost, and to reclaim her status as human despite her artificial body. This

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chapter suggests that depictions of posthuman coming-of-age portray a process that involves

deep consideration of the tensions between real and artificial, old and new, human and

machine. Pearson’s distinctively introspective first-person narration unveils the subjectivity of

her cyborg protagonist to depict the psychological and emotional experience of constructing and

accepting a new form of posthuman identity made up of composite fragments. In analysing

Jenna’s quest to be recognised as human, this chapter considers questions of personhood,

posthuman ethics and citizenship. I consider the novel’s approach to the question of where

‘human essence’ might be located, and the competing discourses that attempt to associate it

with either the mind, body or soul. I argue that Pearson constructs a narrative in which the

differing perspectives of science and spirituality are put into conversation with each other

through character conflict, interrogating diverse pre-humanist, humanist and posthumanist

viewpoints on how we define humans and Others.

The third young adult novel in my corpus is Pure, Julianna Baggott’s 2012 narrative,

which takes place in a grim and gritty post-apocalyptic world. I consider Pure as the bridge

between the young adult novels and the adult works of science fiction I discuss in the

subsequent two chapters. Like the novels of Meyer and Pearson, Pure also traces the coming-

of-age journey of a female adolescent protagonist, Pressia, who must come to terms with a

posthuman body she perceives as deviant from her pre-apocalypse identity. However, in

Baggott’s novel, Pressia’s interior journey towards accepting her posthumanity is just one thread

of the narrative. Not only are the representations of posthuman bodies and landscapes far more

viscerally horrifying than in Cinder and The Adoration of Jenna Fox, but Baggott’s portrayal of

life in a degraded posthuman world and the various forms of Othering that occur in it offers a far

more complex treatment of the politics of embodiment and definitions of the human.

Posthumanity in Pure is associated with deformity, toxicity and monstrous fusions of human and

Other, which Baggott constructs through her different ‘fused’ hybrid figures. Drawing inspiration

from the real events of Hiroshima’s nuclear devastation and its tragic aftermath, Baggott’s

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hybrids in Pure include humans fused to the earth, objects, animals or other people. These

fused figures were produced during ‘The Detonations,’ an apocalypse akin to nuclear blasts

which contained built-in nanotechnology that catalysed fusions in survivors. I assert that Pure’s

divided populations of the fused, disfigured ‘wretches’ who exist in a devastated nuclear

wasteland, and the technologically enhanced ‘Pures’ selected to live inside a protected Dome

city, present a compelling portrayal of the politics of exclusion and dehumanisation. Told from

multiple narrative perspectives, Pure offers diverse points of view that destabilise fixed

definitions of the human. The novel disrupts associations between the label ‘human’ and

‘normal’ human embodiment by depicting both wretch and Pure bodies that physically and

biologically test conventional limits of the human. In Baggott’s imagined world, posthumans with

radically disfigured or enhanced bodies can still be counted as human, broadening definitions of

the human to move beyond surface traits of embodiment. I argue that Pure presents a story in

which humanness resides in a particular kind of humanised consciousness that places value on

internal traits of resilience, strength, desire for justice, conviction and hope—aspects of the

human that endure in this novel when all else has been destroyed.

In Chapter 4, I argue that Stephanie Saulter’s 2013 adult science fiction novel Gemsigns

mobilises the figure of the genetically engineered ‘splice’—representing an exploited social

group of genetically enhanced human beings—to explore the politics of the deviant posthuman

body. Similar to Pure’s portrayal of a society ostensibly divided into ‘human’ and posthuman

populations, in Gemsigns the posthuman “gem” (11) underclass are scientifically created to

serve the ‘human’ population of “norms” (11). In this chapter I contend that Saulter’s fictional

construction of the gems’ battle for recognition as human beings worthy of rights and liberties

provides an explicit analogy to the ways in which cultural patterns of racism have defined certain

people as subhuman. I discuss how the narrative’s focus on the social, legal and economic

implications of recognising the gems as human interrogates colonial practices and ideologies

that have been used by authorities to justify institutionalised forms of division and exploitation of

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the Other. As in Baggott’s novel, we are granted a variety of perspectives to access viewpoints

on both sides of the struggle; in Gemsigns readers observe the gems’ struggle for legally

recognised autonomy from the viewpoint of both prominent gems and Gemtech authorities who

seek to maintain ownership and control over their posthuman commodities. The narrative

dramatises the tension between corporate leaders as well as anti-gem religious radicals who

mobilise discourses of monstrosity to promote their view of the gems as inferior subhumans. By

constructing competing perspectives and privileging the voices of individual gems, Saulter

humanises her posthuman characters and purposefully characterises them as a heterogenous

group of individuals. In exploring the text’s discourses of race and monstrosity, I assert that

these draw attention to the severe personal and social consequences of disregarding ethics and

humanity in the service of control, profit and progress. Saulter succeeds in highlighting complex

aspects of the politics of difference, depicting the ways that discourses of difference are

deployed by authorities to reinforce systems of control on one hand, and revealing how

subordinated groups can mobilise their differences to elevate rather than diminish their human

status. This chapter investigates the ways that Gemsigns frames difference as a matter of

perception, by calling particular definitions of the human into question, and exposing how

biological difference has been misguidedly seized as a justification to exploit and oppress

populations deemed subhuman. In doing so, I argue that Saulter’s novel utilises the posthuman

to critique flawed humanist ideologies that endorse the superiority of one population over

another on the basis of racial, cultural or biological difference.

My fifth and final chapter moves firmly into the territory of complex and even

experimental dystopian science fiction, to discuss the dark, confronting representations of

posthumanity in Jeanette Winterson’s 2007 novel, The Stone Gods. Winterson intentionally

disorientates readers with her disjointed tale of repeating worlds, as revealed in four different

sections that each take place in vastly different time-spaces. As readers, we pause frequently to

consider, is this a distant future, or is it a distant past? The Stone Gods portrays exterior and

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interior forms of colonisation that are made possible by technological advances, and raises the

proposition that humanity possesses an enduring propensity to destroy the very things that

sustain life. Nature is presented as an Othered entity throughout the novel, as natural

environments are repeatedly exploited, depleted and destroyed. Through grim depictions of

varying landscapes at different stages of environmental ruin, Winterson’s novel presents a lucid

portrait of utterly destroyed landscapes. I argue that in displaying repeating cycles of

environmental ruin across a spectrum of time and space, The Stone Gods satirically critiques

the fatal consequences of utilising technology to realise social and cultural imperatives that will

ultimately be made redundant as values inevitably shift. As in Pure and Gemsigns, human

bodies are also Othered and exploited in Winterson’s narrative but for dramatically different

purposes. Winterson’s feminist agenda is evident in the novel’s critique of a perverse patriarchy

that panders to male desire. Machines are Othered commodities in the narrative, and Winterson

literalises the relationship between human and machine via the developing relationship between

human protagonist, Billie and her android companion, the Robo sapiens Spike. Like Pearson’s

novel, The Stone Gods uses the tension between human and artificial to examine the logic by

which individuals demarcate boundaries between human and Other. Questions about the extent

to which ‘human’ traits of consciousness, emotion, and capacity for meaningful connection can

be called upon to delineate between human and cyborg are raised and answered in Winterson’s

narrative. Indeed, some aspects of the narrative even affirm that love and kinship could

potentially bridge the gaps between human and Other. Finding ways to enhance symbiosis

between ostensibly opposing categories of identity is a posthumanist quest that imbues The

Stone Gods with a semblance of hope that affinities rather than differences can come to define

humanity.

I have drawn the aforementioned theorists and novelists together in conversation to

consider how contemporary women’s science fiction offers a means of challenging lethal

patterns of Othering grounded in the politics of difference. In doing so, I assert that these novels

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present the possibility for the symbiosis of human and Other, ontological categories previously

perceived as in conflict. In each of the chapters that follow, I explore distinctive representations

of posthuman subjects and images that depict varied relationships between human and Other,

and diverse perspectives on how the human should be defined. As the novels each portray, the

amalgamation of human and machine, human and animal, or human and nature, for instance,

severely complicates life for posthuman subjects—existence as a hybrid or composite being is

characterised by anxiety, struggle, exploitation and violence. Through the eyes of posthuman

protagonists, we encounter personal experiences of oppression, the loss or absence of agency,

and what it feels like to be objectified and dehumanised. The narratives examined present

readers with complex relationships between marginalised individuals and the social forces that

relegate them to the margins, inviting empathetic responses to the diverse plights of posthuman

characters living in an unjust posthuman world.

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CHAPTER 1

The Anomalous Posthuman Body in Contemporary Young Adult Cyborg Fiction: Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012)

Why is it that at the beginning of the twenty-first century — with its multiple geo-political insecurities and

anxieties, its distinctly ambivalent expectations of the future, and its growing awareness of internal

pressures — the western world and its developed counterparts should be so unsettled by anomalous

embodiment?

Shildrik, Dangerous Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and Sexuality

As an adolescent reader, I recall being drawn into fantasy worlds of science fiction that were far

enough removed from my reality to offer a pleasurable escape. What remained invisible to me

until I developed the more critical lens of an adult reader was that these narratives also provided

insightful and instructive insights into the process of constructing identity and grappling with the

anxieties of embodied difference as a female teen. In twenty-first century Western societies,

adolescent girls face the complex process of understanding heteronormative womanhood, and

balancing childhood vulnerability with burgeoning autonomy, amidst the radically shifting social

values of our posthuman world. Recent young adult literature written by women addresses this

process through representations of anomalous female bodies that challenge the ideals of

human wholeness and physical purity, offering versions of embodiment that are hybrid,

multiplicitous, fragmented and even monstrous. Depictions of these types of bodies provide an

alternative to accepted norms, and through this, they draw our attention to entrenched cultural

systems of power and oppression that privilege particular categories of identity over others. This

chapter discusses Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012) in light of the novel’s portrayal of a

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disenfranchised cyborg female whose “deviant” embodiment as an unfeminine, part-machine

girl complicates the process of constructing personal identity. Read against discourses on

anomalous embodiment and disability studies, to consider a range of marginalised subject

positions — cyborg, female and disabled — I assert the value of reading Cinder as an allegory

for socially “abnormal” adolescent individuals finding acceptance of the “deviant” aspects of their

identity and resisting the psychosocial pressures of normativity. It is this focus, on not only the

anxieties of adolescent subject formation reflected through the posthuman allegory, but also on

the multiple categories of oppression symbolised by Cinder’s cyborg nature, that enables me to

engage in a cross-disciplinary approach to examining the use of posthuman tropes in twenty-

first century young adult science fiction.

Women authors of young adult science fiction offer a range of complex but potentially

empowering representations of anomalous adolescent embodiment, creating narrative

possibilities that can awaken teen readers to an active process of negotiation with the systems

of signification and categorisation that segregate disparate identities in our contemporary world.

Female protagonists in this genre often struggle against violently oppressive social systems that

impose restrictions on individual agency and the body. The heroines in contemporary dystopian

science fiction are rarely weak, passive observers of the subjection they witness. Instead, these

protagonists are often portrayed as resilient and capable of asserting their will for

independence, justice and equality. Moments of vulnerability are not included to portray

feminine weakness, but rather to humanise their battle against a restrictive status quo.

In many instances, the posthuman figure of the girl cyborg has been used in twenty-first

century young adult science fiction to express the capacity for active hope and resistance in the

face of exclusion, oppression or exploitation. Debra Driza’s 2013 novel Mila 2.0, for example,

features a female cyborg protagonist who discovers that she is not in fact human, but was

created in a laboratory by a scientist. The first person narrative follows the journey of an

adolescent girl who, like Cinder, must escape from the scientific scrutiny and experimentation

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that comes with being regarded as a valuable specimen. Mila’s strength, desire for

independence and autonomy, and her determination to save herself and loved ones, reflects her

empowerment despite external forces that seek to control and exploit her. When seventeen year

old protagonist Kaitlyn of Julia Crane’s novel Freak of Nature (2013) wakes up with what she

suspects to be amnesia, teal plastic embedded in her arms and legs, and the ability to

automatically register temperatures and heart rates, she quickly realises that she has been

transformed from human to robot. Having donated her body to science, Kaitlyn has become an

object of radical experimentations that violate ethical and moral codes of her society—another

scientific specimen without control over her own body, even though her thoughts and emotions

are distinctly human. What these novels and Cinder have in common is that while they each

portray the control that scientists wield over the bodies of cyborg subjects, this control does not

extend to the girls’ minds. Further, the girls are all able to escape the outcomes that scientist

creator figures intend for them as they choose to utilise the powers afforded to them by

advanced technologies to resist control. Technology is portrayed as a double-edged sword; both

responsible for the characters’ plights, and the key to them finding freedom and empowerment.

The astonishing popularity of young adult dystopian science fiction suggests that

adolescent readers relish the possibility of girls directly confronting unjust forces of societal

control that repress individual autonomy through deliberate acts of violence and oppression. In

Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, Sara K. Day, Miranda Green-Barteet, and

Amy L. Montz discuss the value of examining girl protagonists who resist conformity and reject

normative codes of behavior. They argue that the figure of the teen female protagonist, “directly

contradicts the common perception that girls are too young or too powerless to question the

limitations placed upon them, much less to rebel” (3). Further, the authors link the experience of

dystopia to that of female adolescence by highlighting the protagonists’ experience of liminality.

Navigating the liminal spaces between girlhood and womanhood, conformity and self-

determination, the female teens in these novels are in a state of transition from the incomplete,

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fragmented conception of the adolescent self, towards the ostensibly unified, fixed personhood

of the adult.

As the discussions of the science fiction novels in this thesis unveil, the notion of identity

as unified and fixed is inherently aligned with Western humanist rationales of human identity

that seek to define selfhood in ways that frame difference from social norms as deviance, as

fragmentation or contradiction in terms of lack or absence. We see that instead, the construction

of posthuman identity entails finding acceptance of fragmentation and the points of hybridity or

multiplicity that complicate rather than simplify human identity. Posthuman young adult

narratives invariably expose the fallacy of obtaining a coherent or stable sense of selfhood, and

indeed Cinder’s own coming-of-age process involves the discovery that her identity only

becomes increasingly splintered, ‘multiple,’ or deviant from her society’s norms as she evolves.

After all, at what point does an adult actually arrive at the destination of being a ‘fully developed’

person? Identity tends to become increasingly complex with age and maturity, and if anything

part of the process of finding self-acceptance involves embracing the many seemingly disparate

and conflicting dimensions of the self. In this sense, literary representations of posthuman

subjectivity illustrate that subject formation is not so much about reconciling our character

incongruencies as much as it is about recognising and accepting them.

Young adult dystopian science fiction that engages with distinctly posthuman concerns

further provides authors with the ability to challenge conventional morphologies and the binaries

associated with them. Posthuman theory seeks to break down Western humanist logic that

attempts to shore up distinct boundaries of social identity by placing individuals into rigid

categories. Fixed categories of identity such as human and technology, human and animal,

subject and object, or self and Other, are questioned in dystopian literature through the

construction of posthuman characters that are not easily classified. Posthuman bodies are

anomalous, as fragmented amalgamations of human, machine, animal, and object. These

figures can be seen as hybrid or multiple in their identification with seemingly opposing

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classifications, aligning them with Donna Haraway’s cyborg as “odd boundary creatures” (2) in

their occupation of the space between borderlines. In young adult science fiction that focuses on

posthuman concerns, representations of this dissolution of ontological certainties illuminate the

struggle of negotiating this liminal space for teen girl protagonists. While posthuman theorists

espouse the enabling potential of frustrating binary logic, the experiences of characters in these

novels often involve violence and subjection as a consequence of their deviations from “normal”

human embodiment.

In Meyer’s novel, the cyborg female protagonist presents a form of posthuman

embodiment that diverges from the normalised standards of the human body within the world of

the novel. Cinder’s body is a fusion of human and technology, and in the context of her broader

society, this relegates her to a subservient cyborg underclass that serves the ‘human,’ that is,

non-cyborg, population. In Cinder, the liminal space is dangerous territory. Cinder is deemed

subhuman by the dominant human population that views cyborg status as threatening and

deviant. This cultural attitude is used to justify the treatment of cyborg bodies as specimens,

threatening the dissolution of Cinder’s agency as she is objectified for the purposes of human

scientific advancement. From this oppressed position, Cinder attempts to resist the

classifications imposed upon her by the patriarchal state of New Beijing, engaging the

adolescent reader in the politics of difference from the perspective of a disenfranchised

individual. Ironically, Cinder’s anomalous body holds the key to humanity’s survival in Meyer’s

novel sequence, and she becomes not only a threat to her society’s hierarchised structure, but

also a symbol of how the posthuman body can productively destabilise humanist assumptions

about the superiority of particular categories of identity over others.

In Cinder, the posthuman body provides a particularly apposite metaphor for the

adolescent body, as a dynamic site of malleability and multiplicity, poised between childhood

and adulthood. Young adult literature critic Elaine Ostry discusses the function of such bodies in

highlighting the anxiety and self-consciousness arising from pressure to conform to normative

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codes of embodiment. “The posthuman body,” she writes, “is a metaphor for how foreign one’s

body feels during adolescence, as adolescents must discover themselves and reintegrate into

their society" (238). The collection of essays in the 2018 publication, Posthumanism in Young

Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World edited by Anita Tarr and Donna R. White

also explores the parallel between adolescence as a site of liminality and transition, and the

transition involved in transitioning from humanist to posthumanist forms of subjectivity. Notably,

the collection emphasises the anxieties associated with constructing identity when negotiating a

subject position in-between both childhood and adulthood, human and posthuman. In her essay,

‘Once Upon a Cyborg: Cinder as Posthuman Fairytale,’ Angela S. Insenga asserts that “via the

delivery system of popular versions of the fairytale, Cinder is the instantiation of posthuman

anxiety. She learns to resolve acculturated inscriptions of her body through constant interplay

between emergent selves” (Isenga 56). While Cinder demonstrates resistance to idealised

conventions of femininity in many ways, her moments of self-consciousness towards her

metallic body parts reveal her awareness of how physically different she is from the fully human

females in the novel who conform to the dictates of heteronormativity. The adolescent reader

can trace the protagonist’s changing relationship to her cyborg body, as she moves from

continually concealing her cyborg status, to the horror of having her true identity exposed,

through to discovering the intrinsic power that lies in her anomalous embodiment. The unique

approaches Meyer takes to representing anomalous embodiment demonstrate how the

posthuman body affords the potential for a teenage readership to absorb key lessons about self-

acceptance and toleration of aberrance and difference in others.

Cinder is the first of Meyer’s ‘Lunar Chronicles’ series, which revives traditional fairytales

such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White,’ recontextualising them in the contemporary urban

settings of her imagined world. Meyer originally commenced her writing career as an author of

fan fiction, notably for the anime series ‘Sailor Moon,’ shaping a distinctively playful pop

aesthetic. In a recent interview, the writer acknowledged that this experience played a

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significant role in shaping her voice as an author of fantasy. Meyer’s unique brand of science

fiction offers the young adult audience a strangely anaesthetised dystopian world, when

considered in relation to other recent young adult dystopias such as Suzanne Collins’s series

‘The Hunger Games,’ Julianna Baggott’s ‘Pure’ trilogy, and Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’ series.

Purposefully reshaping the traditional “Cinderella” fairy tale, Meyer appropriates familiar

archetypes to dramatise the tension between the anomalous adolescent subject and the

broader society in a posthuman world. The eponymous protagonist’s cyborg body is a constant

reminder of her anomalousness—both for herself and others.

Cinder is a fusion of metal, wires and circuits, and a biologically human body. Our

modern Cinderella is no longer a housemaid, but a mechanic renowned for her skills in repairing

cyborgs and androids. The parallels between the cyborg body and the disabled body become

apparent throughout the novel, with social normativity in Cinder’s New Beijing society dictating

that the human ideal is a body that is complete, with a fully functional biology and wholly organic

makeup. The physical, social and psychological implications of living as a cyborg with a metallic

prosthetic foot are evident in Cinder’s ongoing struggle to find personal and social acceptance

of the cyborg aspects of her identity. In her 2020 article, ‘New Directions in Disability Narratives:

Cyborgs and Redefining Disability in Young Adult Literature,’ Yasmine Sweed articulates that

literary depictions of cyborg characters who rely on technological intervention to restore

functionality to their disabled bodies can create an oppressive “binary of normality and

abnormality that degrades characters with impairment and forces them to conform to socially

and culturally constructed expectations” (190). While Sweed is more interested in

representations of human females with disabilities in young adult literature who are made

cyborg through their constant dependency on medical technologies, it is clear that the

normalisation of non-cyborg bodies in Cinder’s society has positioned the protagonist as

abnormal and thereby socially “deviant.” Sweed points out the productive nature of the cyborg

as a symbol of the disabled Other, asserting that as neither “fully impaired nor fully abled,” the

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figure of the cyborg destabilises “the discourse of otherness and the hierarchies within the

dichotomies that legitimate the domination of ableist assumptions” to become “a potent form of

resistance and a new mode of being that can redefine the meaning of disability” (191). Further,

in his recent examination of the resonances between posthuman and disabled forms of

embodiment, Stuart Murray expresses that perceptions of particular bodies as lacking or

incomplete pertain to a widely accepted cultural belief that in order to be regarded as human

one must possess “embodied wholeness” and that “such wholeness acts as a portal for other

characteristics — rationality, autonomy, centred and coherent selfhood — that are equally

understood to be central to the articulation of a human state of being” (3). With these ideas in

mind, the portrayal of Cinder’s social, physical and psychological struggles in dealing with the

realities of cyborg embodiment and constructing identity as an anomalous posthuman takes on

heightened symbolic significance as a literary medium for challenging narrow conceptions of the

human.

The opening scenes of the novel establish Cinder as a competent and assertive teenage

girl who has adapted to the difficulties of living with a fragmented body and identity. The

disjointed nature of her anatomy is made evident at the beginning of the novel, as Cinder

removes her own mechanical foot: “Cinder gripped her heel and yanked the foot from its socket.

A spark singed her fingertips and she jerked away, leaving the foot to dangle from a tangle of

red and yellow wires” (6). The reader is presented with a vivid image of amputation, in which

Cinder’s body is characterised as incomplete, representing at a metaphorical level the

unfinished nature of the adolescent body and the anxiety caused by the state of ongoing

transformation and becoming symptomatic of the maturation process. The cathartic experience

of removing an appendage that has been outgrown reflects an underlying tension between

Cinder’s childhood body and her evolving physical form: “She slumped back with a relieved

groan. A sense of release hovered at the end of those wires – freedom. Having loathed the too-

small foot for four years, she swore to never put the piece of junk back on again” (6). Cinder’s

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discomfort with the cyborg aspects of her body are often presented as a frustration with their

dysfunction as she grows, as her machine parts have been fitted to her childish body and

therefore symbolically tie her to the body of her childhood. In this way, the removal of her metal

foot can also be read as a shedding of childhood as she embraces the growth of her adolescent

body. Initially Cinder rejects the cyborg features of her body; however, unlike the aversion

expressed by other human characters, her “loathing” does not stem from the inorganic nature of

these parts, but rather from the fact that her mechanical appendages cause her pain and

annoyance. This is the first time that readers are introduced to the cyborg body within the novel,

and given Cinder’s pragmatic acceptance of her body, they are yet to understand that she is in

fact stigmatised as inorganic and judged as socially subhuman.

Throughout Cinder, much of the protagonist’s anxiety about her disfigured physical form

stems from her inability to completely conceal the markers of her deviance from others who

would perceive her as flawed, incomplete and even repulsive. Cinder’s awareness of the

external judgments of the broader society becomes evident in her interactions with other

characters. She shields her mechanical body parts to protect herself from the derisive attitudes

of the other shop owners and customers in her workplace: “The fewer people who knew she

was a cyborg, the better. She was sure she’d go mad if all the market shopkeepers looked at

her with the same disdain as Chang Sacha did” (11). Cinder knows too well that cyborg status

means social exclusion in the context of New Beijing. Her quiet retort to Sacha’s scorn, “It’s not

like wires are contagious” (7), illustrates Cinder’s acknowledgement that cyborgs are perceived

as threatening by the wider population. Her desire to hide the metallic plating in her left hand

under thick gloves further highlights that part of Cinder’s maturation has involved managing the

judgment of others in order to maintain her autonomy. Acutely aware of how others perceive her

aberrations, Cinder can be perceived by the reader as a representative for individuals who

recognise that their physical imperfections situate them outside of the dictates of normative

embodiment in the real world.

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While Meyer delays revelations of the significant dangers of being classed as cyborg in

New Beijing, Cinder’s situation early in the novel is complicated through the intrusion of

heterosexual romance into the narrative. Unlike many traditional versions of the Cinderella

story, Meyer presents a female protagonist who would happily resist the traditional trajectory of

romantic love stories. Prince Kai’s appearance seems to transform Cinder from an independent

and mature individual, to a teenage girl on the cusp of sexual realisation, as Cinder’s self-

consciousness towards her posthuman body is awakened in his presence. As Kai enters

Cinder’s workshop, her immediate impulse is to ensure that her steel hand is not visible

underneath her disguise: “Cinder dared to lift one stabilizing hand from the table, using it to tug

the hem of her glove higher on her wrist” (9). Cinder’s self-consciousness about her cyborg

body mirrors the anxieties experienced by adolescents when in moments of heterosexually

induced apprehension, they compare their own bodies to the feminine ideal. Throughout

adolescence, the opinions of others are likely to become a girl’s gauge for assessing whether or

not she is accepted or rejected within society. In Identity in Adolescence: The Balance Between

Self and Other, Jane Kroger writes: “Normative adolescent development encompasses a time of

increased movement in the balancing and rebalancing of subject and object” (13). This ongoing

process is evident in Cinder as the female protagonist measures her own worth against her

impression of how she is perceived by others.

Cinder’s friendship with the android Iko reveals the varying degrees of deviance from the

unified human form that operate within the novel. While as an android, Iko is not physically

human at all, she reflects the conventional adolescent female desires that underwrite archetypal

“princess” fairy tale narratives in her fan girl admiration for the prince: “Prince Kai! Check my

fan, I think I’m overheating” (13). Cinder ridicules such behaviour, temporarily positioning herself

outside of heteronormative paradigms by choice. Iko, and Prince Kai’s android, Nainsi,

represent one extreme of the cyborg form as completely artificial robots. Nainsi’s feminine form

is also interesting to consider as Cinder notices the android’s typically “mock-feminine shape”

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that classifies her as an “outdated model” (10). Meyer presents the adolescent reader with an

image of simulated femininity, but also with the concept that the female body is something that

can be replicated en masse “off the conveyor belt” (10) to meet predetermined norms of

embodiment. The “outdated” mock feminine state of Nainsi’s android body also implicitly signals

that just as the android ideal changes over time, the feminine ideal can also be seen as

dynamic, and possibly unattainable therefore as a consequence of its evolving and elusive

nature.

At the human end of the spectrum that segregates human from machine are Cinder’s

stepsisters, Peony and Pearl, who embody the ideals of standardised female beauty. The role of

beauty in constructing selfhood for the teenage girl is reflected through Meyer’s representation

of the stepsisters’ attitudes towards the value of feminine beauty. Cinder is sensitive to her

physical differences, which are heightened when she compares herself to the beauty of her

sister Peony, who, dressing for the ball, is replete with all of the adornments of femininity: “her

younger stepsister looked angelic, her dress all silver and shimmering, with hints of lavender

when caught in the fire’s light” (25). Cinder’s human sisters act as foils that foreground her

deviance from conventional images of purity and wholeness. Her “dirty fingers”, “blackened

gloves” (7) and disheveled hair reflect her divergence from heteronormative standards of female

beauty. In this sense, it is not only her cyborg nature but even Cinder’s unkempt physical

appearance that accentuates her difference from other teen female characters. Implicit in

Cinder’s name—significantly, she is not simply named “Cinderella”—is a threat to images of

feminine beauty through the suggestion of the destructive potential of fire. Cinder’s identity, in

name and embodiment, acts to destabilise the status quo. Her lack of feminine shape, coupled

with her synthetic parts, fuels her anxiety about her embodied difference: “If Cinder’s body had

ever been predisposed to femininity, it had been ruined by whatever the surgeons had done to

her, leaving her with a stick-straight figure. Too angular. Too boyish. Too awkward with her

heavy artificial leg” (34). As a cyborg, then, Cinder’s identity bears multiple markers of deviance

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in that not only her fragmentation but also her demeanour problematises her identification as

human, feminine and whole.

Meyer has constructed a dystopian world in which the human population is not only

emotionally and socially threatened by the presence of the cyborg body, but also by a very real

physical threat to their survival, the letumosis plague. In the desperate hope of finding a cure,

the rulers of New Beijing created the cyborg draft, summoning cyborgs at random for enforced

testing of potential antidotes. When Cinder’s sister Peony dies from letumosis, Adri, the

archetypal evil stepmother, believes that Cinder is to blame and volunteers her for plague

testing. Adri is fully aware of the implications of this decision, telling Cinder, “You are a sacrifice

I will never regret” (54). Adri does not recognise Cinder as human, an attitude that is reinforced

as she asks Cinder, “Do your kind even know what love is? Can you feel anything at all, or is it

just… programmed?” (51). Without tear ducts, and thus the capacity to cry and express her

feelings, Cinder is perceived as lacking the fundamental qualities that would classify her as

human. As a consequence, Cinder’s posthuman body is reduced to a specimen to be injected

and infected with a disease from which there has been no known case of survival. The

measurement and assessment of the cyborg body according to the degree it deviates from the

‘pure’ human provides a powerful metaphor for the operations of racism and other forms of

subjection and objectification. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari comment explicitly on how

those deemed anomalous or deviant can be perceived as subhuman and thus treated with a

corresponding disregard for rights ordinarily available to humanity: “From the viewpoint of

racism, there is no exterior, there are no people on the outside. There are only people who

should be like us and whose crime it is not to be” (197). It is evident that Adri, and the wider

human population, permit the subjugation of cyborgs on the basis that their degree of embodied

difference is enough to justify their persecution as something Other than human.

At this stage of the novel, Cinder abhors her cyborg nature, as the non-human fragments

of her body are the source of her subjection: “Cinder hated it. Hated Adri. Hated the mad voice

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behind the mirror. Hated the nameless people who turned her into this” (63). Cinder’s rejection

of her cyborg nature is further illustrated as the narrative intrudes into her subconscious, the

horrors of her recurring nightmare. Cinder’s hopelessness and despair are captured in her

dream vision of herself as a dismembered cripple, incapable of escaping from a scene of

perpetual destruction:

Flames. Smoke. Blisters burbling across her skin. Her leg and hand were gone, leaving

stumps where the surgeon had attached her prostheses. Dead wires hanging from them.

She tried to crawl but was useless as an upended turtle. She reached out with her one

hand, trying to drag her body from the fire, but the bed of coals stretched off into the

horizon. (60)

Such images of futile resistance and anguish underscore Cinder’s experience as an anomalous

figure. Cinder’s subconscious perceptions of herself as horrifyingly impaired in her ability to

move and in the appearance of her detached body portray her deep-seated psychological and

emotional struggle to come to terms with the fragmented nature of her cyborg body. Her

perception of herself as a “crippled” (60) victim suggests her self-identification as a disabled-

bodied individual who has internalised the ableist language and ideologies of her society. As

disability studies theorist Dan Goodley asserts, “the illusory ideal whole of the non-disabled

white Western adult male — a reality of living in the symbolic order under the phallus — is

sustained by the localisation of lack in the disabled body” (132), and inevitably in the other sites

of deviation from the ideal that characterise Othered identities. The ideals of New Beijing as

they apply to definitions of the human evidently mirror those articulated in Goodley’s

assessment of the whole/lack dichotomy. At this stage of the novel, Cinder becomes aware of

not only her own suffering and subjection at the hands of authorities that deem her subhuman,

but also of the collective suffering of Others like her. Cinder’s nightmare occurs just after she is

captured for the purposes of scientific testing, and it differs from her previous ones, as she finds

herself surrounded by “other crippled victims” who are “moaning and begging,” “missing limbs,”

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with some depicted as “nothing more than a head and a torso and a mouth, pleading” (60). In

this dream, it becomes clear that Cinder now perceives herself in relation to the collective

suffering of the wider cyborg population. For an adolescent, a key development of the

maturation process is to move from the egocentric position of the self-centred child, to adopt a

broader understanding of the dynamics that position the individual in relation to the wider social

world. Cinder recognises that her individual suffering is symptomatic of an overarching system

of values that perpetuates the violent oppression of a distinct underclass viewed as different and

therefore less than human. In this way, Meyer portrays the moral awakening catalysed by

intense suffering as a potent adolescent rite of passage.

Throughout the novel, Cinder grapples with the question of how to gauge or measure the

extent of her humanness. When she awakens in a laboratory after she has been injected with

letumosis-carrying microbes, a startlingly precise quantification of “36.28% not human,” (64)

assesses the extent of her deviance from normalised embodiment. A holograph displays the

internal makeup of Cinder’s cyborg body, projecting a digital image of her organs, bones and

metallic components, a “medical diagram spliced in half” (72). Her posthuman body is presented

as transparent and porous, with no visible boundaries that divide her interior from the external

world. It is also the first body to survive the transmission of letumosis, endowing her with new

self-worth: “She was immune. She was important” (79). However, as Prince Kai enters the lab

and sees the holograph, Meyer reminds the audience that the wider society still perceive the

cyborg body as aberrant rather than valuable. Cinder’s self-consciousness returns as she

observes his reaction to the holograph: “Cinder squeezed her fists together, nerves twisting in

the base of her stomach, as Kai recoiled from the image. A girl. A machine. A freak. She bit her

lip, resigning herself to never receiving another of the prince’s heart-stopping smiles” (97). Kai’s

‘recoiling’ prompts Cinder to recall her status as a ‘freak,’ affirming Cinder’s belief that her body

must be considered as monstrous.

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These plot developments make Cinder’s presence at the ball later in the novel a much

more dangerous experience than in the traditional Cinderella tale. Tension rises as the reader

anticipates that Cinder’s cyborg nature could be discovered. The antagonist, Queen Levana, the

powerful ruler of the alien Lunar population, adds another dimension to the fear that Cinder

experiences. As Cinder dances with Kai, she mistakenly believes that he has already

discovered her cyborg identity. In her mental comment “He knew, but he wasn’t disgusted? He

would still touch her? Somehow, unbelievably, he still even, maybe, liked her?” (260), her

disbelief at Kai’s unexpected tolerance of her cyborgness is evident. Cinder’s expectation that

Kai would find her fragmented body ‘disgusting’ reveals her insecurities about her deviant body.

When her cyborg nature is finally unveiled to the public at the novel’s climax, the reactions of

Kai, Queen Levana and the other guests confirm Cinder’s expectations. Kai’s response, “His

jaw fell, and he looked momentarily as if he might be sick,” is supported by Levana’s open

judgment of Cinder’s anomalous body as “disgusting” (278). Meyer positions the adolescent

reader to consider the experience of living as repellent, monstrous or grotesque. Ostry, drawing

on the work of Paul Starr, explains that the representation of monstrous bodies offers an

intriguing metaphor for the adolescent experience of perceiving the body in a continual state of

growth:

The grotesque body “is in the act of becoming,” just as the adolescent body is, and it is

at the interface of boundaries (human/animal, human/machine) that we are

uncomfortable crossing. The average adolescent may also feel like such an open,

frightening body, subject to violation and very far from finished perfection. (Ostry 231)

The compassion Cinder’s predicament elicits from the reader in her moment of rejection

encourages contemplation of the ways in which girls are encouraged to conceal the markers of

imperfection or deviation for fear of how their physical differences might be perceived by the

wider world. Further, in a context in which the revelation of Cinder’s true identity could amount

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to Cinder’s dissection, exclusion, persecution, or even death, this moment becomes a poignant

indication of the potentially violent consequences of deviation from normativity.

Cinder’s body exists as a site that marks multiple points of transgression from

heteronormative embodiment. Towards the end of the novel, Meyer reveals a new dimension to

Cinder’s character that complicates her identity even further—her true identity as a Lunar

princess, an alien bloodline that threatens to topple the rulers of New Beijing. A key moment of

empowerment occurs at the ball when Cinder resists Queen Levana’s glamour—magical

powers that conceal her true appearance—revealing that Levana’s unrivalled beauty is a

façade. In a recent blog post, Meyer responded to a piece of fan art that depicted Levana’s face

reflected in a fractured mirror. Meyer commented on “the illusion of beauty Levana tries to show

the world,” and that “her glamour is impermanent and variable, like a mask that can be changed

out for a new one” (Fairest Fanart). In the novel, a significant point in Cinder’s maturation is

marked as she recognises the constructed nature of the ideal feminine aesthetic, while directly

challenging the forces that threaten Prince Kai, the human population and her own survival.

Cinder confronts the queen, “It really is an illusion. You’re not beautiful,” as her cyborg abilities

allowed her to see “a perfect illustration overlaid the perfect woman – and they were not the

same” (274). This is a revelation for Cinder. Her cyborg abilities had previously been labeled as

defects and positioned her as disenfranchised, but now she recognises them as strengths: “Her

scanner was seeing beyond the illusion… it knew where the true boundaries of the queen’s face

were, the imperfections, the inconsistencies” (274). Cinder’s adolescent rite of passage is

signified by her recognition of the constructed nature of normalised standards of female

desirability, and her determination to resist oppression by mobilising the deviant aspects of her

embodiment, motivating her to seek an escape outside of New Beijing.

In this passage Cinder’s identity is rendered even more complex and multiple than

previously as she becomes a combination of cyborg, Lunar and human girl. At the moment that

her Lunar abilities manifest, she experiences a foreign sensation as the boundaries between her

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human and mechanical form become blurred: “She could see the electricity sizzling across the

steel surface, but she couldn’t tell if it was her human or cyborg eyes detecting it. Or maybe, not

human. Not cyborg. Lunar” (276). Although Cinder’s realisation of her Lunar status positions her

in a category even more detested by the human population than cyborgs, this scene can be

interpreted as the moment in which she transcends society’s constraints on her capacity for

agency. Cinder’s distinctiveness is associated with potency, as opposed to weakness: “She felt

different. Strong. Powerful” (276). The archetypal symbol of femininity in princess narratives—

the ball gown—is significant in this scene, as Meyer uses it to reveal that Cinder’s multiplicity

enables her to transcend social dictates, with the heat of her metallic body threatening to

“incinerate the fragile dress” (276). Further, after Dr. Erland equips Cinder with state-of-the-art

technological gadgets, she becomes an enhanced, transhuman version of herself, “fully

accessorised,” “plated with 100 percent titanium,” armed with “a hidden flashlight, a stiletto

knife, a projectile gun,” and “tranquilizer darts” that she would “be able to load [. . .] with a single

thought” (286). Such embellishments to Cinder’s body reflect a new perception of the

posthuman body as enhanced rather than defaced. Further, Cinder’s shifting attitude towards

her body illustrates her self-acceptance, a key moment in the journey of adolescence when

female teens discover a means of comfortably integrating into society.

Jennifer Mitchell explains that Cinder’s status as a fusion of disparate identities

establishes her as a valuable symbol that challenges fixed modes of being that favour duality

over multiplicity:

Ultimately, it is her status as conglomerate, as part-human, part-alien, part-machine—as

fundamentally queer composite—that makes Cinder who and what she is: an icon of

hope for the disenfranchised groups with which she identifies and belongs. Cinder’s

amalgamated trans status provides these contingents—Lunar, cyborg, servant— which

are splintered and framed as often oppositional, with the potential for collective mobility.

(56)

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Significantly, Mitchell identifies the potency of the cyborg figure as a symbol for negotiating a

passage outside of dualistic modes of identification. This is productive for considering how

Cinder can also be seen as a symbol of hope for adolescent girls who are struggling to reconcile

the seemingly conflicting components of their changing identity as they move towards

womanhood. In the final stages of her maturation in this novel, Cinder realises that she is able

to “be anyone. Become anyone” (294), as a Lunar who can construct her own identity with

complete autonomy. The final lines of the novel and the symbolic act of removing her ID chip

leaves the young adult reader with Cinder’s complete transcendence of the limitations of

singular modes of identity as she overcomes any need for wholeness and a definable sense of

self: “Soon, the whole world would be searching for her – Linh Cinder. A deformed cyborg with a

missing foot. A Lunar with a stolen identity. A mechanic with no one to run to, nowhere to go.

But they would be looking for a ghost” (294). This conclusion leaves readers with an impression

that posthuman girlhood and female adolescence alike can allow for passage outside of the

dictates of normative embodiment and identity. Cinder’s rebellion leads her to mobilise the

aspects of her body that mark her as anomalous, to escape social judgment and redefine

selfhood on her own terms.

Ultimately, the novel traces the arduous journey of an adolescent female figure who

learns to accept and even embrace the markers of her own anomalousness. In Meyer’s

dystopian world of New Beijing, existing as a hybrid of human and machine is punishable by

subjection, experimentation and death, exposing the severe threat that presenting as an identity

Other than human can impose on an individual by virtue of their embodied difference. The

political implications of this representation are clear: systems of normativity that regulate bodies

and behavior can produce violent consequences for individuals who do not meet the expected

codes of the dominant group. On a subjective level, Cinder’s anxieties are a product of her

awareness that her cyborg body relegates her to the precarious position of Other, and outside of

the heterosexual construction of feminine selfhood. It is from this disenfranchised position that

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she must learn to negotiate a new form of identity that is complex in its seemingly contradictory,

fragmented and multiple nature. Cinder’s posthuman body situates her as a creature on the

boundaries between human and technology, just as her adolescent body is poised on the

borderline between childhood and adulthood. As such, through portrayals of Cinder’s

experiences, Meyer offers insight into the complexities of liminality, from the dangers it poses, to

the potentially emancipatory opportunity of finding passage outside of the systems that

construct and maintain clear social boundaries to preserve hierarchical order.

In comparison to portrayals in other young adult science fiction novels that utilise the

cyborg trope, Cinder presents a strikingly complex treatment of the relationship between

embodiment and social disempowerment. At the same time, Meyer’s fairytale appropriation

subverts the traditional heteronormative romance of conventional Cinderella narratives, to offer

a resolution in which the cyborg female’s powers force her onto an alternative path. There is no

happily ever after for Cinder that includes the prince, wealth and social status to end her

subjection. Rather, Meyer’s narrative offers a twenty-first century revision of outmoded gender

constraints, depicting an independent, immensely powerful modern Cinderella who must create

a new social script to accommodate an identity that has exceeded all existing boundaries. In

Cinder, the pathway to empowerment is more than a simple quest to escape the clutches of

possessive scientists, or to battle a repressive government intent on maintaining a restrictive

status quo. Resistance ultimately entails physical escape, as well as ideological and ontological

reconsideration of the limits imposed on certain bodies and identities.

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CHAPTER 2

Posthuman Coming-of-Age in Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox

As young adult science fiction, Mary E. Pearson’s 2008 novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox

depicts a complex representation of an adolescent girl’s search for identity after she discovers

that she is posthuman rather than human. This chapter discusses Pearson’s construction of the

cyborg and digitally stored consciousness as posthuman tropes used to portray the anxieties

associated with posthuman subjectivity during the coming-of-age process for a teen female.

Building on the discussion of Marissa Meyer’s novel Cinder in the previous chapter, this chapter

analyses how Pearson’s distinctive cyborg narrative moves beyond the influence of posthuman

embodiment on an individual’s process of subject formation, to explore more deeply the

nuances of cyborg subjectivity. While Cinder provides an example of the posthuman imaginary

being utilised to expose young adult readers to how the politics of difference can be imposed on

the bodies of the marginalised to socially exclude and dehumanise Othered lifeforms, the focus

of The Adoration of Jenna Fox is rather on how the transition from human to posthuman

influences internal landscapes and familial relationships.

In a 2019 article, Aline Ferreira observes the growing prevalence of depictions in young

adult fiction that display the posthuman fantasy of being able to insert human consciousness

into a technologically produced or cloned body. Ferreira asserts that the “pervasive nature of

this trope [...] bears witness to its prevalence in a technological imaginary that is now taking

these and similar visions of being reborn in a different body seriously, offering (fictionalized)

hope of new technological and medical rebirths, novel corporeal beginnings that raise many

ethical concerns” (246). Pearson’s novel is just one of a range of young adult novels written by

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women since 2008 that uses the trope of inserted consciousness to grapple with the

complexities of adolescent identity through the subjective voices of female posthuman

protagonists. In Sangu Mandanna’s 2012 novel The Lost Girl, for example, the self-aware first-

person voice of female protagonist Eva exhibits a sense of rejection and melancholy in

knowing that her technologically crafted body does not belong to her, but to the “Weaver” (3)

that made her. The first chapter, aptly entitled “Other” (3), reveals that Eva is a technologically

produced copy designed to replace another girl, Amarra, in the event of her death. As Eva

reflects, “I imagine he’s got a bit of my other’s skin, a bit of her self, and he uses it to make me

look just like her. To put a bit of her soul into me. As for the rest, he stitches me together from

bits of someone else” (4). The reality that Eva is a duplicate of her “other” shapes her entire

existence and identity and central to her process of subject formation is to choose whether or

not she wants to remain a “copy” or become an original version of herself. Similar to the choice

Jenna Fox is confronted with as she determines whether to keep or destroy her ‘back-ups,’ as I

discuss later in this chapter, Eva’s narrative is centred on the development of self-

determination and individuality. Heather Hildenbrand’s 2013 novel Imitation follows a similar

storyline as cloned female protagonist Ven, a copy of the wealthy Raven Rogen, steps in to

replace her genetic donor and grapples with her own autonomy in deciding whether or not to

sacrifice herself for Raven.

Jessica Chiarella’s 2016 novel And Again also takes up the posthuman trope of being

reborn into an inorganic body to explore the ethics of disrupting conventional cycles of life and

death to save human lives, and questions of whether identity is more embedded in the mind,

heart or body. Hannah voices the experience of discarding her old identity to become a

renewed version of herself: “It hits me, the certainty that I’ve shrugged off my former self and

taken root within something else. I think of a snake shedding its skin, leaving the dry, crusted

remains to the whims of the sun and desert sky” (5). While the experience of transitioning from

human to posthuman in order to preserve life in Chiarella’s novel is represented as a positive

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application of biotechnologies that affirms the value of human life, in The Adoration of Jenna

Fox the emotional, psychological and spiritual costs of posthuman transformation are far more

pronounced.

Jenna Fox’s rebirth into posthuman form can be read as a metonym for humanity’s birth

into a techno-mediated reality that necessitates new conceptualisations and definitions of

personhood. As a figure representative of humanity’s position of merging with an intensely

medicalised techno-culture, Jenna Fox’s posthuman embodiment and subjectivity challenges

humanist assumptions regarding the integrity of the natural human body and consciousness.

Pearson presents the process of adapting to a technologically enhanced, anomalous body as a

symbol for society’s gradual acceptance of complex relationships between humanity and

technology. The narrative is conveyed through a first-person voice that emphasises that

transitioning from human to posthuman entails intense existential and ontological questioning

of what it means to be an artificially constructed nonhuman subject. Pearson’s protagonist

grapples with familiar adolescent rites of passage: the tensions between old and new identities;

childhood and adolescent selves; the significance of formative memories in shaping identity;

adjusting to a changed physical body that feels utterly foreign; and the role of interpersonal

relationships in negotiating the boundaries between self and Other. However, as a teen girl

who has recently discovered a shocking truth—that to save her life, her parents have

transformed her into the first illegal cyborg of her kind—Jenna Fox must also contend with an

entirely unprecedented set of questions.

Indeed, for Jenna, posthuman coming-of-age involves deep consideration of which

aspects of her new cyborg identity derive from mind programming built into her artificial

neurochips, and which from what she thinks of as her ‘real’ self. Pearson’s representation of the

posthuman body is developed through Jenna’s journey to reconstruct the old/human and

reconcile them with the new/posthuman fragments of her emerging identity. The novel focuses

on the events following Jenna’s awakening from a coma after a tragic car accident to find that

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she cannot recollect the details of her former life. The reality that she is now a cyborg is initially

concealed from Jenna by her parents; however, she discovers that cutting edge nano- and

biotechnologies were used to equip her with an artificial body made up of blue “Bio Gel” covered

in laboratory-engineered ‘human’ skin. This revelation marks an abrupt transition from

conceptualising the self as human to conceptualising it as posthuman and is a crucial turning

point in the novel—on a physical and literal level, Jenna must adapt to a new body made of

foreign, artificial matter that makes her feel utterly alien. On a psychological and metaphorical

level, Jenna must also construct a new form of subjectivity that accepts unprecedented forms of

fragmentation and ambiguity.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox deals with the process of reconciling anxieties associated

with posthuman embodiment and identity in a far more literal manner than Meyer’s allegorical

portrayal of a teen female cyborg learning to accept her deviant body in Cinder—emblematic of

adolescent coming-of-age. Jenna explicitly considers literal definitions of human identity,

selfhood and relationships as she contends with the uncertainty of determining whether

becoming posthuman is a positive or negative development. Her process of constructing a

sense of self is made complex and challenging as a result of her posthuman body and

consciousness. Like Cinder, Jenna experiences rejection from others and revulsion towards her

own posthuman body; further, in a world where being medically transformed into a cyborg is still

ethically wrong and highly illegal, she also questions whether or not she should even exist.

While in Cinder cyborgs are a familiar presence in New Beijing society, in Pearson’s novel

cyborg embodiment is portrayed as a revelation—a new form of human/technology hybrid

produced from genetic and biological engineering. The novel opens up an exploration of these

bodies and the possibilities they afford for interrogation of the adolescent subjective experience

is notable.

This chapter explores both the literal and metonymic narrative strategies Pearson

utilises to represent Jenna’s predicament of transitioning her self-perception from a

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dehumanised “thing” (Pearson 90) to a humanised subject. On a metonymic level, Jenna stands

for every girl in her quest for self-definition, autonomy and an understanding of complex

existential truths, yet on a literal level, in the context of the novel, Jenna is an alien figure—both

as an artificially constructed cyborg and an illegal citizen. Jenna’s experience of translating to

posthuman status places her in a fraught political position as a subject without rights, freedoms

and human status. Living in a cyborg body that well exceeds her society’s legal limits for

posthuman experimentation, Jenna discovers that she exists in a concealed and heavily

restricted microcosm of her parents’ making. On one level—the human level—the novel deals

with Jenna’s desire for independence and autonomy. However, the fact that her father is also

the biological engineer of her new posthuman body significantly complicates the power dynamic

at play. Thus, the novel illustrates how posthuman experimentation permits parental authorities

to exercise control over the adolescent body and mind in unprecedented and devastating ways.

In this sense, The Adoration of Jenna Fox uses many of the key tropes that distinguish young

adult narratives from other literary genres while exploring how existence in a posthuman age

complicates conventional concerns of literature written for an adolescent audience. Elaine Ostry

offers a useful summation of the tropes common to young adult fiction and comments on the

ways in which the posthuman factors into representations of the construction of adolescent

identity:

Writers use the literary tropes of young adult literature (and adolescence itself) to show

the complexities of the coming age: the search for identity and sense of self, the

discovery of the lie, the separation between parent and child, the formation of new peer

groups, resistance to adult control, decision making, growth and adaptation, and the

challenge of hierarchies. The texts, in short, use biotechnology as a metaphor for

adolescence. Such extreme treatment of the flexible body that challenges borders adds

a dramatic dimension to the changing adolescent body and the identity crisis that arises

from it. (223)

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In addition to the conventional young adult concerns Ostry observes, Pearson in The Adoration

of Jenna Fox deploys the posthuman tropes of cyborg embodiment and consciousness to

explore the anxieties distinctive to constructing identity in a twenty-first century world.

Further, Victoria Flanagan argues that while Pearson’s novel explores the influence of

technology on the development of female subjectivity, the relationship between subjectivity and

the body here is significant not simply because it endorses posthuman concerns, but because of

the narrative’s reluctance to abandon humanism completely (40). Indeed, Jenna’s quest for a

unified, stable sense of identity is the source of much of her anxiety, as well as the conflict that

drives the narrative. Flanagan also asserts that the novel possesses dystopian elements despite

the fact that the ending represents technology as enabling rather than disempowering for

children and adolescent subjects (2). My focus is less on the enabling potential of

biotechnologies, and more on their potential for controlling the mind and body. While, as

Flanagan points out, the overall trajectory of the novel presents an individual who prevails over

the limits imposed on her by her technologised embodiment, the majority of the predicaments

faced by the protagonist are shaped by her strong desire for freedom from the control of others

over her behaviour and knowledge. Pearson’s narrative is predominantly negative in its

portrayal of authority figures utilising technology to seize control over the teen female’s body

and mind in ways not ordinarily possible.

In this chapter’s first section I discuss the novel as a posthuman Bildungsroman that

presents Jenna’s construction of a new identity from the fragments of memories, experiences

and relationships with others as a process characterised by ambiguity and uncertainty. I argue

that while there are parallels between Pearson’s depiction of posthuman coming-of-age and

conventional adolescent rites of passage, posthuman subjectivity is represented as starkly

different from humanist conceptions of selfhood as requiring a struggle for cohesion and

wholeness.

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In the second section I examine the novel’s exploration of questions concerning

ownership over the mind and body as Jenna continually battles against the covert and overt

controls of her parents. Her anxieties are also exacerbated by the social and legal limits

imposed on her as a result of her posthuman status, mirroring the limits placed on adolescents

as a result of their status as dependents. I contend that while a young adult readership can

relate to the narrative’s portrayal of a disempowered heroine resisting overt and covert

mechanisms of parental control, it is Pearson’s choice to place an adolescent female

unknowingly and therefore unwillingly transformed into a posthuman cyborg by her parents at

the heart of her thriller that makes this conventional conflict all the more compelling. In the third

section I examine Pearson’s representation of adolescent rebellion as Jenna seeks to claim

agency over her foreign, artificial body, her mind and choices as both an adolescent girl and a

posthuman cyborg. Jenna’s quest to grasp the extent of her humanness is imperative because

being classified as nonhuman in her society means that she is deprived of the autonomy she

craves—autonomy she would be entitled to as a ‘person,’ defined as a being that possesses an

organically created human body and mind.

The fourth section focuses on posthuman embodiment, discussing Pearson’s depiction

of the political, ontological and existential concerns Jenna faces in coming to terms with her new

alien body and her technologically inserted consciousness. I consider moments in the narrative

in which Jenna is confronted with the artificial nature of her body which are significant to the

distinct shifts in her conceptualisation of what it means to be human/real or nonhuman/artificial. I

also analyse depictions of posthuman disembodiment in the fifth section of this chapter, where I

examine Jenna’s experience of being a ‘split subject’ who exists in both embodied and

disembodied forms. The revelation that Jenna’s ‘mind’ has been digitally stored opens up

pertinent questions concerning the primacy of the mind over the body in a posthuman world. As

I discuss in the sixth and final section on the nature of the soul in a posthuman world, while

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scientific knowledge locates the human in the physical body and the ‘thinking’ mind, religion

emphasises the intangible dimension of the soul as the storehouse of humanity’s true nature.

The process of reconciling how to conceive of herself and her place in the world as an

artificial, potentially ‘soulless’ cyborg drives Jenna’s heavily introspective quest for answers to

life’s most pressing—and arguably unanswerable—questions. Central to Jenna’s process of

reconciling existential and ontological anxieties as a posthuman adolescent girl is the realisation

that her aspiration for unity and wholeness is unattainable—a step towards posthuman

consciousness that resists deference to humanism. Jenna’s emergent posthuman identity is

characterised by gradual recognition of fragmentation and deviance, uncertainty and ambiguity,

as crucial aspects of an alternative mode of selfhood.

The posthuman Bildungsroman: accepting fragmentation and ambiguity

Representations of posthuman subjectivity in contemporary young adult fiction can offer teen

readers new ways of conceptualising the construction of identity in a techno-centric world.

Novels such as Meyer’s Cinder, Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox, and, as we shall see,

Baggott’s Pure each provide valuable insights into the ways in which the science-fiction genre

can explore new models of subjectivity through figures who are posthuman amalgams of human

and Other. Pearson’s novel can be examined as a posthuman Bildungsroman narrative with the

narrative of transitioning from human to posthuman analogous to the young adult coming-of-age

process.The narrative explores an adolescent girl’s developing relationship with a changed body

that has become foreign and a site of struggle. From the outset, readers observe that

conventional adolescent rites of passage such as self-individuation and rebellion against

parental controls are complicated by Jenna’s posthuman nature. As critic Thomas J. Morrissey

states, “Pearson adapts the coming-of-age tale to the era of posthumanity” (197). Yet while, as

Morrissey notes, the “intimate first-person revelation of hard-won personal growth is a tried and

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true formula for novels of teen angst,” he points out that as Jenna awakens to find herself a

cyborg, her “primary rite of passage is anything but familiar” (197). Reminiscent of Marilyn

Kaye’s ‘Replica’ series, which includes an extraordinary twenty-four books published between

1998 and 2002, Jenna’s story centres around the search for individual identity in a context

where truths about the abuse of biotechnologies are concealed from the girls. Just as Kaye’s

protagonist Amy must learn the truth that she is one of thirteen genetically engineered clones to

gain an understanding of who and what she really is, Jenna’s quest for self-understanding

deepens when she learns the truth of her cyborg nature.

What distinguishes Jenna’s quest from those depicted in other young adult science-

fiction novels is the detailed emphasis the novel places on the construction of posthuman

subjectivity as distinct from human consciousness, as well as the urgent necessity for Jenna to

find self-acceptance of her fragmented embodiment given that her biology is primarily inorganic.

Similarly to Meyer’s representation of the unfinished nature of the posthuman body—an

apposite metaphor for the evolving adolescent body—Pearson offers an adolescent female

protagonist at odds with the posthuman elements of her new identity. I build on Morrissey’s

observations to explore the ways in which the novel details Jenna’s complex emotional and

psychological processes of coming to terms with the disparate aspects of her fragmented

identity, as she attempts to reconcile tensions between her former childhood identity, her new

persona, and her cyborg nature. Pearson’s novel portrays the emotional, spiritual and

psychological nuances distinctive to Jenna’s subjectivity as a cyborg female forced to negotiate

foreign and fragmented experiences of embodiment and consciousness.

The subjective point of view from which Jenna’s story is told provides readers with direct

access into the mind of a posthuman individual who must adapt to life in an artificial body. Elana

Gomel has discussed how recent “theoretical elaborations of posthumanity have described “new

forms” that subjectivity assumes within the postmodern configurations of power/knowledge”

(Posthuman Voices 178). Gomel contends that the first-person narrative voice in science-fiction

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novels enables authors to engage in the act of speaking as Other, rather than reinforcing

models of the humanist self as consistent and coherent (Posthuman Voices 179): “The primary

means for representing subjectivity in the literary text is narrative voice. In the case of a first-

person narrator, we have direct access to his/her interiority” (Posthuman Voices 178). Pearson’s

novel differs from the traditional Bildungsroman in manifold ways by placing emphasis on a

female cyborg protagonist whose human subjectivity has been shattered. While from a humanist

perspective maturation has been described as the “development of an innate genetic potential

under the influence of a particular geographical and cultural setting” (Summerfield and

Downward 2), in Jenna’s case, the coming-of-age process is fraught with horrifying questions of

identity that starkly contrast with common human questions. Pearson’s narrative reveals that

living as the embodiment of a scientific experiment carries its own psychological and emotional

challenges. For instance, Jenna’s uncertainty regarding her identity is exacerbated by the

realities of being considered a physical and ethical anomaly, with an unpredictable lifespan of

anywhere from two to beyond two hundred years. Jenna’s recurring questions drive her search

to discover “who or what I am” (68), to affirm her conviction that “I belong here. I deserve to be

here” (62) and reconcile the “many definitions of human” (72) that shape her evolving selfhood.

Parallels between human and posthuman coming-of-age can be clearly drawn, yet the narrative

reveals that for Jenna, existing as a female cyborg subject carries its own complex anxieties

and concerns.

The novel centres on the conflict between Jenna’s old/human and new/posthuman

identities. In Pearson’s novel, the transition to posthuman cyborg is not represented as a clean

epistemic break from the past. The old and new intermingle, and not only are these disparate

identities difficult to disentangle, but the human and technological elements of the subject are

often indiscernible. As Jenna attempts to redefine her new identity through personal reflection,

her inability to grasp a cohesive definition of who and what she is exemplifies her overwhelming

uncertainty: “I am what I am. I just need a definition for what that is. Jenna n. 1. Coward. 2.

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Possibly human. 3. Maybe not. 4. Definitely illegal” (107). There are deep problems posed by

Jenna’s predicament of not knowing with any certainty that she is human, and her uncertainties

are amplified by the reality that as far as her wider society is concerned, her artificial make up

deprives her of legal human status. Jenna’s sense that she does not possess control over her

own body and mind is exacerbated by her realisation that these aspects of her selfhood were

copied, rebuilt and embellished without her knowledge or consent. Science-fiction critic Lisa

Yaszek asserts that conventional understandings of the human subject are challenged by the

advancement of technologies as the body is transformed “into a conduit between (rather than a

protective barrier against) external forces and the internal psyche,” and suggests that “as the

body becomes a kind of permeable interface, technological mediation seems to replace direct

organic experience as the subject’s primary source of information about itself and the world”

(The Self Wired 1). For Jenna, technological mediation does not entirely replace or negate

organic experience, but rather these contrasting means of conceptualising the self and broader

world are intermingled. A complex element of Jenna’s rite of passage is her recognition that the

quest to become an autonomous subject who possesses complete control over her own mind

and body is an elusive aim—a realisation that may also present a startling reality check for

adolescent readers as they too determine the impossibility of this aspiration. Rather, the novel

endorses an alternative mode of subjectivity that embraces interconnectedness between self

and Other, human and technology, and ambiguous, even haphazard methods of constructing

identity.

Throughout the novel, the role of memories in forging selfhood is significant. As an

adolescent, Jenna is at a stage during which individuals would ordinarily be active in making

sense of past experiences to develop a life-story that aids in establishing a cohesive sense of

identity. Recent research in the field of adolescent psychology suggests that the construction of

a life-story is crucial to identity development for teenagers (McLean 683). This notion of a clear,

linear, and methodical process of development is challenged by Pearson’s representation of

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posthuman identity formation via the unexpected and drastic transformation of self that Jenna

undergoes. The novel introduces Jenna’s predicament: “I used to be someone. Someone

named Jenna Fox. But I am more than a name. More than they tell me. More than the facts and

statistics they fill me with” (9). As a newly created cyborg whose former memory has been

wiped, Jenna’s rite of passage begins almost from tabula rasa. The narration traces Jenna’s

attempts to access her past to reconstruct her identity, gathering fragmented memories and

information collected from family, peers and her own personal investigation. She gradually

learns that she can never reclaim her former selfhood, but instead must negotiate new

relationships between mind and body, self and Other, human and technology. Jenna has lost

the memories of formative childhood experiences that ordinarily shape an individual’s beliefs

and behaviours. Consequently, she attempts to transcend surface aspects of subjectivity such

as name, dates and facts to find an identity beyond personality and physical embodiment.

Readers experience Jenna as a distinctly unreliable and uncertain narrator. Pearson

represents Jenna’s reconstruction of identity as occurring through a disoriented and fragmented

psyche that struggles to cohesively grasp notions of time and identity. This is evident in the

chapters made up of verse-like reflections in which Jenna contemplates the meaning of words,

concepts and definitions now foreign to her, attempting to make sense of her unfamiliar

surrounding world. For example, in the chapter entitled ‘Time,’ Jenna reflects, “There are words.

Words I don’t remember. Not obscure words that I wouldn’t be expected to know. But simple

ones. Jump. Hot. Apple. Time” (12; emphasis in original). Despite the fact that Jenna is unaware

of her posthuman nature in the opening of the novel, readers observe that her experience of

being reborn as a cyborg entails confusion and displacement as discordant memories,

definitions, and thoughts emerge in haphazard, nonlinear ways without form or structure. While

fiction has long been a vehicle for exploring the fragmented nature of the human psyche,

Pearson’s portrayal of Jenna’s evolving posthuman cognition builds to present the coalescence

of machine ‘thinking’ and human consciousness. As the neurochips in Jenna’s new artificial

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brain begin to integrate and develop after she awakens in her posthuman body, her memories

are either entirely absent or fragmented. She must reconstruct her definitions of both the world

around her and herself as she rebuilds knowledge. Pearson portrays Jenna’s process of

constructing identity as disjointed, with the rupture of conventional meaning-making processes.

Jenna’s dependence on recorded memories in the early stages of remembering who she

once was only heightens her anxieties, as the life story she discovers is fragmented. Jenna

reflects on her haphazard recollection of memories that enable her to regather the fractured

pieces of her former self: Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake

through me. They click, click, click into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then

they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life (56). Here, it is clear

that Jenna feels intensely anxious about the lack of control she holds over the reconstruction of

her life-story as she cannot select meaningful memories from a vast spectrum of stories and

experiences with which to identify. Instead, she attempts to seize the “shards,” “bits” and

“moments” (46) to draw together disparate elements of her identity. The description of her

posthuman brain building new links conveys a mechanical, methodical process of small

fragments forging connections to reconstruct data. The narrative reveals that Jenna’s new mind

has been created to simulate natural processes, but this occurs in artificial ways that alter her

processes of cognition.

The early stages of the novel are underpinned by a largely humanist orientation. Jenna

was formerly human, is not yet aware of her posthuman nature, and has only ever experienced

human subjectivity. In depicting the transition from human to cyborg, Pearson situates Jenna in

a liminal space between her former human self and her Othered posthuman state. Remnant

memories of Jenna’s former personality and relationships are experienced as though they

belong to somebody else. Initially, Jenna attempts to reconstruct memories of her past in a

methodical, linear manner by viewing videos of her childhood self captured by her adoring

parents. While at first Jenna is able to glean some knowledge of her former life and identity from

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watching the footage in order, she finds the process insufficient in filling in the gaps. Jenna’s

diminished sense of self stems from her inability to identify with the version of herself she

observes in the video clips, a girl who is desperate to “stay on the pedestal” (60) and remain

perfect in the eyes of her parents. The footage also reveals to Jenna a more confident, self-

assured girl who was gradually gathering the strength she needed to challenge the authority of

her parents. Internal conflict arises as the new Jenna marvels at the confidence of her former

self, yet laments the loss of her previous strength in the question, “Why is this Jenna so strong,

but I feel less powerful than a single kilowatt?” (47). As the story evolves, intense personal

reflection characterises Jenna’s process of reconstructing incongruous aspects of her selfhood.

Questions of ownership - who owns Jenna’s body and mind?

The novel portrays radical violations of ethical boundaries and illegal biotechnological tampering

with human embodiment and consciousness, raising crucial questions regarding ownership of

the body. For Jenna, the quest for personal empowerment and agency over her own body, mind

and identity occurs primarily within a tightly controlled microcosm governed by parental

authorities. The changes made to Jenna’s body, though crucial to her survival, were made by

her parents without her consent. As Jenna reflects, “Choices were made. None of them mine”

(59), it is made clear that even in the early stages of the narrative she is acutely aware of her

lack of agency. The recurring question ‘who really owns Jenna’s body and mind?’ invites

adolescent readers to deeply consider how humans can be reduced to objects of scientific

experimentation. A significant reason why Jenna must so vehemently contest her status as a

subject worthy of autonomy is because her parents’ choice to act on her behalf meant that she

has had absolutely no input into the trajectory of her life or identity. In Ethics and Emerging

Technologies, bioethicist Ronald L. Sandler discusses the unpredictable nature of human

enhancement technologies, arguing that it is impossible to determine in advance “whether they

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are likely to exacerbate or diminish social injustices” (8). As we shall see, Saulter’s Gemsigns

presents a pertinent exploration of the potential for biotechnological enhancement to produce

rampant social injustice. In Gemsigns, questions of bioethics arise through portrayals of

biological tampering intentionally utilised to create an exploited underclass of genetically

modified “gems” who face significant injustice as biotech companies seek sustained ownership

over the bodies of their posthuman creations. By contrast, in The Adoration of Jenna Fox,

Pearson’s narrative focuses on the utilisation of biotechnologies in service of the objectification

of a human girl who must contest the realities of her subjection in isolation. Jenna’s is a

personal story of subjective struggle to reclaim ownership over her mind and body, rather than a

public political battle between human and posthuman factions. Her internal monologue reveals

resentment towards her inability to claim possession over her body and a recognised role in the

decisions concerning its function, appearance and the matter of which it is constituted. That

posthuman experimentation granted Jenna’s parents the ability to completely reconstruct and

modify her body and mind without her knowledge translates the conventional young adult fiction

conflict of parents making choices in the ‘best interests’ of their children into horrific abuses of

power.

The use of biotechnologies to alter and preserve the human body remains outlawed in

the world of the novel, indicating that authorities and the society at large still perceive such

technologies as threatening to what they deem just, natural and human. However, through

Jenna’s father, Matthew Fox, Pearson presents a different attitude towards the utilisation of

biotechnologies. As a doctor and scientist, the former head of his biotech company and the

inventor of Bio Gel, Matthew justifies his decision to illegally use the technological innovations at

his disposal to save Jenna’s life. However, the narrative strongly encourages readers to

question what right Jenna’s father has to both claim ownership over his daughter’s body and to

break the law. Significant space is given throughout the narrative to the justifications Matthew

and Claire Fox attempt to provide for their choices. In response to Jenna’s reactions of shock

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and terror at the truth of her posthuman form, both parents continually rely on the defense of

deep filial love to justify their decisions, as Claire claims: “We had to make a choice—save you

the only way we knew how or let you die. Any parent in the world would have made the choice

we did” (64). As the novel progresses, the parents’ unwavering adoration for their daughter—as

suggested in the title—can be interpreted as desperate and coercive and readers are made to

feel that their actions were the product of a deeply troubling moral choice.

The idea that parental ‘adoration’ can become a toxic mechanism for coercive control is

part of the novel’s subtext, and this is evident in the Foxes’ attempts to placate and subdue their

daughter in some instances, and elicit fear, guilt and even gratitude in others. For example,

when Jenna’s parents reveal that although her artificial body is infertile, they saved one of her

ovaries which is preserved at an organ bank, she reacts with expressions of terror and

revulsion, exclaiming, “God! Bits of me have landed everywhere. It would be funny if it wasn’t so

horrifying” (73). Neither Claire nor Matthew empathises with Jenna’s feelings of horror towards

them making such an invasive decision about her reproductive future. Instead, the conversation

soon turns into an opportunity for Claire to express her own pain in emotionally charged terms

that frame her as a victim of circumstance: “Every ounce of our breath was sucked out of us.

For days we didn’t breathe [. . .] So, if we didn’t do everything just right, understand it’s not just

you who’s been through hell” (74). This scene dramatises and literalises Jenna’s total lack of

control when it comes to the decisions made about her body, as readers are encouraged to

visualise the dissection and dismemberment of her biologically human body and the

reconstruction of her cyborg body in visceral terms. The injustice of the decision to artificially

recreate Jenna, forcing her into an extraordinarily difficult existence, is amplified by Pearson’s

characterisation of parents who are dismissive and void of compassion for the suffering that

their choices have inflicted upon their own child. Jenna’s continual antagonism towards their

justifications guides readers to view their moral decision to transform Jenna into a cyborg in

order to save her life with ambivalence. On one hand readers can sympathise with the parent’s

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desperation to save their only child’s life, yet on the other hand their refusal to acknowledge the

suffering Jenna has experienced frames their decisions as profoundly disturbing.

For Jenna, personhood is not just a matter of subjectivity. Being able to affirm humanity

means citizenship, inclusion, rights and freedom. Jenna’s experience of restriction as a result of

her non-human status as an illegal cyborg can be read as an allegory for the experience of

living as a non-citizen subject in the real world. Under the laws of her society, Jenna’s cyborg

body is illegal as it exceeds limits that regulate the amount of technological modification that can

be made to the human biological body. In a 2013 publication drawing on the work of Jürgen

Habermas, Christina Bieber Lake discusses the increasing ability for parents to utilise

biotechnologies to make decisions on behalf of their children. Raising examples such as the

potential use of technologies to ensure a viable embryo, or to choose the gender, or physical

and intellectual traits of unborn children, Bieber Lake emphasises the need for contemporary

bioethical regulations to “especially guard against using others as objects” and to strongly

consider “the attitude with which the interventions are carried out” (Introduction). The

implications of such technologies in terms of producing children that would otherwise not exist,

or would exist in an entirely different form, raise crucial ethical considerations echoed

throughout The Adoration of Jenna Fox. The notion of illegality depends on ideas of irregularity,

deviance, criminality and illegitimacy. Jenna must confront the reality of living as an entity that

her wider society perceives as the embodiment of unethical violations of natural laws. Jenna’s

status as an illegal alien, a subject who is both non-human and a non-citizen, can be read as a

metaphor for people who are classified as “illegal” by virtue of their race; those deemed illegal

immigrants; and people who must live under the radar in furtive circumstances. This aspect of

the narrative would appeal to adolescent readers who cannot participate in conventional rites of

passage due to legal, social, or cultural limitations imposed on them by external forces. Jenna

reiterates the statement “I’m illegal” multiple times when confronting her parents with her status

as a non-citizen: “I’m illegal, aren’t I? That’s why we’re here. We’re hiding out” (69); “No matter

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how you play with the words . . . I’m illegal. I don’t even know if I’m human” (70; emphasis in

original). As a posthuman cyborg, Jenna is legally invalid, and this status magnifies her

uncertainty about her future life and identity. Her illegal status implies that her very existence

presents a threat to social order.

Adolescent rebellion and the quest for autonomy

Jenna exists in a state of subjection both as an object of her parents’ ‘adoration’ and as a

scientific specimen who longs for ownership over her own body and mind. Pearson utilises

Jenna’s transition from human to posthuman to explore how adolescent females find delineation

between self and Other as they begin to prioritise autonomy over compliance with the parental

program. Jane Kroger has identified a process of “internal balancing and rebalancing of

boundaries between self and other” to “produce more differentiated subjective experiences of

identity” (10), a life stage during which adolescents negotiate fresh boundaries that permit

greater freedom and control over their processes of individuation. Pearson has purposefully

severed the transition from childhood to adolescence to make the distinction between the two

life phases more discrete. As Jenna discovers that the fragments of her persona have each

been constructed in accordance with the expectations of others in, “All of your pieces fill up

other people’s holes. But they don't fill up your own” (116), she understands that to reconstruct

a new identity that reflects her authentic individuality, she must attune herself to her own

ambitions and desires. This dramatises the struggle to redefine the boundaries that delineate

self and Other, as Jenna is challenged by the process of creating a new identity much more

dynamic and fluid than the disparate fragments she has been piecing together throughout the

novel. Relevant to Jenna’s situation, Kroger also suggests that a key complexity of the process

of creating a new identity is the realisation that selfhood transcends the piecing together of

disparate fragments: “That self of childhood, derived from significant identifications with

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important others, must during adolescence give way to a self-derived from yet transcending

those foundations – to a new whole greater than the sum of its parts” (11). Pearson constructs a

posthuman protagonist who must come to terms with the fragmented nature of her emotional

and psychological state, and accept her physical deviations from human biological norms.

However, rather than construct a “new whole” from the fragmented parts, Jenna must accept a

new form of selfhood that is incomplete yet distinct from the identity determined by her parents.

Self-differentiation becomes a key process for Jenna in her quest for autonomy. She

must detach from the control that her parents wield over her and overcome the desire to please

them in order to define identity on her own terms. A key step in the coming-of-age journey for

many adolescent individuals is to detach from the confining elements of their childhood identity

to create an independent and autonomous sense of self, whether through rebellion, or an

urgency to reach maturation as they “experiment with roles that represent the many possibilities

for their future identity” (Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman 317). Jenna’s cyborg subjectivity is defined

by feelings of inadequacy in her social identity and resentment towards her parents’ choices.

Adolescent psychologists Don M. Tucker and Lynda Moller highlight that for many adolescents,

the pathway to achieving autonomy is “achieved not just by self-consciousness, and not just by

self-direction, but by rebellion” (88). The authors explain that rebellion can be directed towards

parents who define restrictive roles for teens, as well as, “in the true sense of dialectical

negation,” against the childhood self (Tucker and Moller 88). As a fictional example of

processes of adolescent self-individuation, Jenna’s rebellion against the authority of her parents

and her disconnection from her childhood self, mirrors maturation patterns of adolescents in the

real world. Pearson’s characterisation of the posthuman Jenna sustains the thread of rebellion

against parental authorities with which human Jenna had been experimenting.

Pearson utilises scientific programming of a posthuman individual’s psyche as a

metonym for the adolescent experience of consciously transitioning from enacting externally

controlled behaviours to gaining greater agency over internal identity. Jenna’s grandmother,

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Lily, although initially disapproving of Jenna’s new posthuman form, comes to play a key role in

her personal development. In an effort to awaken Jenna to an alternative approach to

reconceptualising her past and present selves, Lily encourages Jenna to watch video clips of

each year of her life leading up to the accident out of order, to view the final clip of sixteen-year-

old Jenna before earlier videos. In an act of defiance and independence, Jenna decides to

watch the videos in order, effectively choosing to continue to reconstruct her perceptions of self

in a linear sequence indicative of her desire for a cohesive life story. However, after she views

the final video Jenna realises that crucial clues about her real identity and her parents’ actions

have been revealed in it. Jenna’s participation in ballet is a point of contention throughout the

novel because while Claire placed a lot of emphasis on the old Jenna becoming a proficient

ballerina, as Jenna matured she lost interest in both ballet and meeting her mother’s approval,

and also grew to exceed the physical ideals to which female ballerinas are typically pressured to

conform. In the ‘Year Sixteen’ clip, human Jenna protests her mother’s aspirations for her to be

a professional ballerina, exclaiming “I’m five-nine and still growing. I’m not prima ballerina

material [. . .] Why don’t you be a ballerina! You’re five foot seven, the perfect height!” (61).

Jenna finds out that her new body was intentionally reconstructed not in the image of her former

self, but to meet the ballerina ideal: “We look eye to eye. We are the exact same height” (63).

Jenna’s physical growth has been reduced and stunted to fit in with Claire’s desire for her to

meet the ideal ballerina aesthetic. In this episode of the narrative, young adult readers are

presented with an image of the contortions produced by the extreme pressures parents impose

on adolescents.

A horrifying reality of Jenna’s transition to posthuman is that her new mind has been

embedded with mechanisms to control her behaviour and strip her of independent will, mirroring

the behavioural restrictions imposed on teens that reinforce the parent/child dynamic of control

and submission. Once Jenna is aware of the extent of the control her parents have wielded over

the reconstruction and rehabilitation of her cyborg mind and body, her resistance against their

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authority escalates to acts of willful defiance against her programmed neurochips. The moment

when cyborg Jenna finds out that her parents have been programming her behaviour is

devastating, intensifying her experience of helplessness and entrapment. Jenna is outraged to

learn that the imperative command ‘go to your room’ is part of the programming that her father

has integrated into her new body as a tool to enhance control when her behaviour becomes

abnormal or difficult. Morrissey comments on the need for adolescents to amend the parental

program to attain true individuation, “whether it rests on learned behaviour or software code,”

and asserts that true to young adult narratives, “Jenna must become her own person to become

an active agent” (197-98). Early in the novel, Jenna’s will to defy her mother’s command to go to

her room wanes and she questions, “Why am I compelled to do as Mother says even when I

have a desperate need to do something else?” (27). Gaining control over her own will is a

crucial stage of growth that requires knowledge and conscious defiance of external controls.

Surprisingly, Jenna’s grandmother, previously rejecting of the (unknowingly) posthuman Jenna,

evolves into an advocate for Jenna’s developing agency and independence, awakening her to

the truth that the pre-accident Jenna was beginning to defy her mother’s commands. This

discovery prompts cyborg Jenna to challenge the programming embedded into her neurochips,

thereby contesting her parents’ control. The final time Claire issues the command, Jenna

refuses to submit: “I close my eyes. I struggle. I concentrate on every twitch that wants to sweep

me up the stairs” (79). Her inner voice, “Don’t go, Jenna. Don’t go. Don’t go” (80; emphasis in

original), is strengthened as she begins to give power to her own internal commands rather than

external controls, exercising deliberate agency over her own movements and responses to her

parents’ commands. Winning this battle of wills is crucial to Jenna’s evolving cyborg subjectivity

as she can assertively begin to negotiate new relationship boundaries with her parents that

grant her greater freedom to explore her new posthuman identity. Jenna’s anaphoric

exclamations “How dare you! [. . .] How dare you play with my brain! How dare you pretend with

me that I am normal! How dare you program me!” (80) are both a revelation of the truth that she

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has been programmed and an assertion of her personal power. Jenna confronts her father,

challenging his model of the obedient, amenable daughter when she learns that he has been

investigating her school friend Ethan to monitor potential security risks: “Is that what my life is

now? . . . A controlled risk-free cocoon for your lab pet?” (119). As Jenna reflects, “He knows I

am becoming more than he planned. More than the endlessly compliant fourteen-year-old he

loved. But all children grow up” (119), it is clear that she is determined to evolve her identity

beyond the predictability of the compliant human daughter, to embrace the more complex,

multifaceted selfhood that resists confinement to expected codes of behaviour and embodiment.

Jenna’s development of free will presents a posthuman figure who possesses dimensions of

identity ordinarily perceived as the preserve of humans in her wider society.

Posthuman embodiment and the tension between real and artificial

Jenna’s transition to posthuman cyborg is a revelation to both the reader and Jenna, who

simultaneously grapple with the question of how to determine between the human and

posthuman aspects of her subjectivity. The process of grappling with the relationships between

the mind, body and soul as distinct aspects of human identity is central to Jenna’s predicament

of determining whether she is human or nonhuman. The narrative explores spiritual, humanist

and posthumanist perspectives concerning ‘what is human?’ to probe long-standing

philosophical problems that arise when primacy is given to the mind at the expense of the

material body or the soul. While posthumanism has been touted as a theoretical remedy for the

ills of dualistic, hierarchical forms of conceptualising identity, when it comes to the dialectics of

the mind/body binary, posthuman developments can serve to exacerbate divisional logic.

Humanist and posthumanist critics alike have engaged with the critical question of how to

resolve what has been termed the “mind-body problem” (Westphal xi), which describes the

tension between the mind and body as oppositional aspects of the human. The perspective that

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human life can be characterised by the information patterns that signify intelligence, rather than

physical embodiment did not emerge alongside recent posthumanist ideology. N. Katherine

Hayles argues that humanity in the West evolved into posthumanity when the Turing test

confirmed that primacy should be given to the mind’s informational patterns over the body when

defining what it means to be human (xi). Indeed, the question of whether ‘human essence’

resides in the mind or body has roots in early humanism, in 1641 when Descartes first declared

that the mind, consciousness, contains the essence of the human (Westphal xi). Cyborg

embodiment raises an entirely fresh set of questions. We are encouraged to recognise that

dualistic thinking is certainly problematic when we attempt to distinguish between two different

aspects of human identity in a hierarchical way that not only pits one against the other, but

makes one aspect—the mind—superior and worthy of protecting and preserving, rendering the

other—the body—as inferior, invalid or dispensable to human essence. In short, we see that the

body is treated as an Othered entity.

Prominent posthumanist critics including Hayles perceive that posthuman views of the

physical body as an instrument ripe for experimentation and embellishment is a continuation of

the humanist positioning of the body as a cultural tool that can be readily manipulated. Hayles

asserts that from a posthuman perspective, the body is “the original prosthesis we all learn to

manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a

continuation of a process that began before we were born” (3). As Charles R. Garoian clarifies,

the body “is always already an object, a tool, and cultural artifact; an ontological medium that we

use to extend into the materiality of the world” (124). Hayles’s idea has complex implications for

the varied portrayals of posthuman bodies in Pearson’s novel, particularly as we shall see in this

section, in regards to those of cyborg Jenna and her school friend Allys. The posthuman bodies

of both characters are treated as vessels by medical science: Jenna’s organic body is replaced

by an artificial one designed as an extension to her uploaded mind and remaining ten percent

brain matter; Allys’s body is replete with as many prostheses as necessary to ensure her

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functionality and survival. In discussing posthuman attitudes towards the mind-body split

reinforced by Cartesian dualisms, Ben Murnane points out that technological advances can

work in service of increasing the divide: “The body is… replaceable by other, better,

prostheses—which of course are created by the mind-as-innovator. If the body is only a vessel,

then, with available technology, it is philosophically acceptable for it to become malleable,

implantable, constructed and reconstructed depending on the needs and desires of the human

mind” (67). For Jenna, the notion of the body as a vessel to be altered, implanted and

reconstructed to accommodate the mind is a significant source of anxiety. It is a belief that

guided her parent creators to bring her back to ‘life’ as a cyborg, and it produces an ongoing

philosophical predicament as she grapples with the intricate relationships between body, mind

and soul to determine where the storehouse of her human essence resides.

Temporally, the novel is nomadic in its movement between Jenna’s moments of

remembering the past and grappling with her present reality as a posthuman subject attempting

to grasp her own human nature. Jenna’s discovery that her body is artificially constructed

occurs suddenly, when she accidentally injures her hand and a gash reveals the blue Bio Gel

beneath her skin: “The skin lies on a thick layer of blue. Blue gel. Beneath that is the silvery-

white glimmer of synthetic bone and ligaments. Plastic? Metal composite?” (63). This is

portrayed as a moment of shock and horror as Jenna discovers the truth of her body’s cyborg

nature by being physically confronted with its artificial contents. Witnessing the unnatural

colours of silver and blue, and material that looks like plastic or metal beneath her skin, Jenna’s

alienation from the childhood/human self she observed in the videos intensifies into detachment:

“My hands twitch. Can I even call them my hands?” (63). Pearson dramatises this revelation by

portraying Jenna’s immediate reaction of experiencing her body as though it is an alien entity:

“Oh, my God. I look down, the world disappearing beyond the circle of my lap. I am suddenly so

cold. My skin that has never felt right instantly feels foreign” (63). The experience of recognising

the self as posthuman is distinguished by severe disconnection from the body, characterised by

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feelings of intense estrangement. Adolescent readers are viscerally engaged in Jenna’s

moment of crisis as she registers the exigency of her situation: the realities that she has been

horrifyingly deceived by her parents, and that her body is composed of artificial blue matter that

makes her inorganic nature starkly apparent.

As discussed in Chapter 1, the work of Stuart Murray offers a productive framework for

examining the relationships between posthumanist thought and disability studies. Murray has

expressed the subversive potential of “interactions between disability and posthumanism,”

arguing that “such mobilisations push back against those restrictive humanisms that articulate

conformist and restrictive powers of containment and aid the practice of discrimination and

prejudice (6). Margrit Shildrick is another prominent voice in the field of disability studies who

deeply questions the politics of difference as it relates to corporeality and the disabled body.

Shildrick poses a provocative question: “What is it about the variant morphology of intra-human

difference that is so disturbing as to invoke in the self-defined mainstream not simply a

reluctance to enter into full relationship, but a positive turning away and silencing of the

unaccepted other?” (Dangerous Discourses 1) She goes on to argue that “disabled people

continue to endure broad cultural discrimination and alienation, not so much for their difference

(which may of course be hidden) but because their form of living in the body lays bare the

psycho-social imaginary that sustains modernist understandings of what it is to be a subject”

(Dangerous Discourses 1-2). As such, including depictions of the disabled posthuman body in

young adult narratives can challenge teen readers to reevaluate their own attitudes towards

embodied difference and who counts as a human subject to foster greater inclusion and

tolerance in the real world. Engaging with disability politics whether as a critic or a novelist is an

act of seeking “to overturn the normative paradigms that determine who shall be valued and

who not” (Shildrick, Dangerous Discourses 2) and in this regard, Pearson’s novel portrays the

rite of passage adolescents experience as they reconcile notions of difference to understand

that embodied difference does not necessarily equate to diminished value as an individual.

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In Cinder, Meyer’s treatment of an impaired, anomalous body is solely displayed through

the embodiment of a conventional cyborg figure. By contrast, Pearson’s novel displays both

lucid images of cyborg embodiment, through Jenna, and of the disabled posthuman body as

constructed through medical interventions to enhance functionality and prolong life, through

Allys. A key moment in the narrative when Jenna stakes a claim over the direction of her life is

when she decides to return to school despite her parents’ insistence that she remain concealed

from the external world. As Jenna ventures beyond the confines of the controlled home

environment, she is exposed to a range of different attitudes towards embodied difference and

posthuman biological experimentation. Alongside the figure of the cyborg, readers are also

confronted by another manifestation of the posthuman in Allys, who presents a form of

disfigured, anomalous body that blurs the boundaries between real and artificial. Equipped with

artificial arms and legs, Allys represents what theorists of the intersection of disability and

posthuman prostheses technologies have termed the ‘biohybrid,’ “a meeting of material body

and technological adaptation” (Murray 13).

Initially, Jenna is disturbed by Allys’s body, curious about its marred functionality and the

ability to produce synthetic prosthetics that so closely simulate real human body parts. At this

stage of the novel, Jenna is still unaware of the posthuman nature of her own body. Thus,

Pearson frames Jenna’s discovery of the extent of her own anomalousness through the

introduction to another adolescent, female body that has been technologically altered. As in the

opening scene of Meyer’s novel Cinder, in which Cinder detaches her leg to relieve the

discomfort of robotic parts that she has outgrown, Allys removes her leg at the lunch table to

massage her stump (43), revealing to both Jenna and the reader that her fragmented body is an

accepted and unavoidable aspect of her identity. Allys recognises Jenna’s inquisitiveness as

she examines the extent of the modifications. The reader observes Allys’s body from the

perspective of Jenna, the autodiegetic voice providing insight into her personal reflection: “I

stare at the stump and then the artificial leg,” and “my eyes shift from her stump to her hands”

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(43). The exchange “‘They look so –’ ‘Real?’” (43) illuminates Jenna's first moments of

questioning the implications of the hybrid real/artificial body from an externalised perspective,

revealing her attitudes towards physical difference and the technologised body before she must

grapple with these complexities in relation to her own processes of individuation. The notion that

the posthuman body can so closely replicate authentic human form challenges Jenna’s

assumptions regarding the distinct categories of embodiment and identity. For example, when

Allys pulls up her sleeve, Jenna observes, “I can barely see a perceptible line where artificial

meets real skin” (43), indicating her astonishment at the diminished barriers between organic

and inorganic. This is furthered as Jenna closely examines the fluid and efficient movements of

Allys’s artificial hand: “I watch her artificial fingers delicately bend and adjust around the bread,

just like they are real. I am aware of prosthetic devices, but I think this is the first time I have

seen them so close. The skin looks as real as my own” (43). Jenna’s observation that Allys’s

artificial body appears as real as her own foreshadows the revelation of her cyborg nature,

when determining between which parts of her are organic or artificial becomes a line of inquiry

she pursues with intensity.

Questions of bioethics are also raised through the voice of Allys, who is a vocal

advocate for the existence of the Federal Science Ethics Board (FSEB), the government body

responsible for policing the limits imposed on biotechnological experimentation. Allys’s views

are antithetical to those of Jenna’s parents and represent a conservative approach to the ethical

dilemma of the extent to which technologies should be utilised to intervene in natural human

biological processes. Again, the novel raises ethical questions regarding posthuman

advancement through an intensely personal lens, as Allys exclaims: “If the FSEB had been in

existence fifty years ago, I might not be stuck with all this hardware. My toes might actually feel

like toes and not numbed-up sausages!” (106). Allys’s ethical stance towards the technological

interventions that distinguish her posthuman disabled body expresses her desire for increased

control over how her body is altered. The personal desire for ownership over the body in the

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face of technological intervention is explored through the situations of both Jenna and Allys,

prompting young readers to recognise that protecting individual rights to autonomy and choice is

crucial to developing an ethics of the posthuman.

Like Allys, Lily believes that stringent restrictions should be imposed on posthuman

experimentation. Through the character of Lily, Pearson presents an apprehensive and cynical

attitude towards the posthuman, including Jenna herself—although Lily ultimately plays a crucial

role in Jenna’s journey towards agency. Lily strongly disapproves of Jenna’s parents’ decision to

use such drastic biotechnological means to save their daughter’s life. Initially, following Jenna’s

awakening, Lily is distant and cold towards her granddaughter. The dehumanising simile and

pronoun in Lily’s remark “It sounds like an animal” (11) in reference to Jenna’s cries upon

waking reflects the fact that Lily perceives Jenna as inhuman and does not feel a filial

connection to the cyborg version of her granddaughter. While Jenna’s mother Claire marvels at

Jenna’s evolving ability to walk without stumbling as her new body develops, exclaiming “It’s a

miracle. An absolute miracle” (11), Lily’s perception is that this new version of Jenna is

unnatural: “Her gait is not natural. Can’t you see that?” (11). Lily is a humanist voice of ethical

and spiritual questioning throughout the novel, continually examining the implications of

tampering with what is natural. However, while uncertain of how to conceptualise Jenna’s status

as part-human/part-machine, Lily nevertheless supports Jenna’s quest for the truth about her

new nature. While Claire prefers that Jenna’s construction of a new identity is focused on

building upon old memories—so that cyborg Jenna will develop to be as close to a perfect

replication of the human Jenna—Lily is initially uninterested in Jenna’s development, believing

that she is no longer the same human granddaughter lost in the accident.

Following her discovery of her artificial, cyborg body, Jenna’s emphasis on the

construction of her emotional and psychological identity shifts to deep consideration of how her

posthuman embodiment alters her sense of self. In the conversation with her father when he is

forced to admit to the truth of how her body and consciousness were saved, Jenna reflects on

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the loss of her real hands and legs, lamenting, “I loved my hands. My legs . . . I had never

thought about it before. They were just there” (67). This moment highlights the fact that prior to

her accident, Jenna had never had to question or contemplate the role of her body in her

identity. However, as she examines her new limbs with the knowledge that they were

reconstructed with bioengineered tissue, Jenna’s sense of alienation is heightened: “‘And now I

can see that these’—I turn them, looking at the palms—’ these are different. They’re not mine.

They’re imposters’” (67). Her experience of living in an altered, unfamiliar body can be read as

an allegory for the adolescent experience of encountering a changed physical form during

puberty. For female teen readers experiencing the leap from childhood to adulthood that

engenders significant physical change, following Jenna’s traumatic experience of adjusting to a

body that feels foreign and unfamiliar speaks to a common rite of passage. Indeed, Jenna’s

first-person voice that presents the feeling of being repelled by her posthuman identity as in, “I

shudder, repulsed at everything that I may or may not be” (70), depicts an unstable form of

selfhood that can only be overcome once Jenna gains greater self-knowledge and familiarity

with her new cyborg embodiment.

Jenna’s new posthuman mind is made up of her uploaded consciousness and her

artificially constructed brain matter, where the only remaining ten percent of Jenna’s original

human form, the “butterfly” (65), also resides. The butterfly is the name that scientists in Jenna’s

world have given to the part of Jenna’s brain, “the pons” (69), that supposedly contains the

essence of her former human self, as Claire explains: “The butterfly, Jenna. That’s what they

call it. The heart of the brain. That you still have” (65). Claire’s insistence that the portion of

Jenna’s brain that remains is “the most important ten percent” (64) invites questioning of what it

means to be human. Jenna’s parents’ arguments that the true essence of her human identity is

contained within the butterfly, along with the uploaded elements of her brain, does little to

alleviate her sense that she is now non-human. In her words, she is “an uploaded artificial freak”

(70), who cannot determine with any certainty that her posthuman form is an authentic

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replication of her former identity. That the extent of her humanness is quantified at ten percent

means that Jenna possesses a tangible measure of her deviance from ‘normal’ human biology.

This awareness provokes strong anxieties about whether the remaining amount of her human

essence is enough to contain her ‘real’ identity. The accumulation of existential questions, “And

if my original ten percent really is enough, what if it had been nine percent? Or eight? Is one

numeral different from another? When is a cell finally too small to hold our essence?” (98),

indicates a posthuman subject still preoccupied with retaining the elements that made her

human, while examining the larger question of what constitutes human nature. At this stage of

the narrative, adolescent readers are encouraged to consider which aspect of their own identity

truly contains the essence of their humanity. The question of whether this ‘essence’ resides in

the organic body, mind, soul, or as Jenna’s parents claim, within the brain’s “butterfly,” which

Jenna herself describes as “the most important piece of acreage in my universe” (126),

becomes a driving conflict of the novel as it grapples with the threshold between human and

posthuman.

Jenna is perplexed by the idea that her skin can be considered as real human skin when

it was grown in a lab. The issue for Jenna is that her skin, and the rest of her body, were

genetically engineered to look and function as if they belong to a ‘real’ human, yet they were not

organically produced. This concern raises the importance of origins in determining what counts

as human. From a posthumanist perspective—the view endorsed by Matthew Fox—

transitioning from organic to artificial biology does not extricate an individual’s human essence.

The novel evokes the question of what right Matthew Fox has to violate bioethical boundaries

and existing laws to recreate Jenna, presenting the combination of filial love and his

posthumanist point of view as a catalyst for his diminished legal and ethical consideration.

Jenna herself initially contests her father’s perspective that greater primacy should be placed on

the mind rather than the body, which drives his decision to ‘preserve’ her mind but replace

ninety percent of her body with artificial matter. As Jenna disputes her father’s justifications for

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tampering with her human body, she points out that it is one thing to genetically engineer a

vegetable to extend its shelf life, but she is not a vegetable. What happens when the same

genetic engineering technologies are applied to the human being? Jenna implores her father to

recognise that there is something egregiously wrong with making the leap from experimenting

on vegetables to humans. In probing the question of how her skin can be human when it is, as

Matthew explains, “Grown in the lab and genetically engineered to be nourished through the Bio

Gel” (67), Jenna bluntly states, “So it’s not human skin” (67). Her father’s response provides

insight into the mindset of an individual who is seemingly incapable of stepping out of his role as

a scientist to consider deeper human, existential questions: “It is human. Completely human.

We’ve been genetically altering plants and animals for years. It’s nothing new. Tomatoes, for

instance. We engineer them to withstand certain pests or to give them a longer shelf life, but it is

still one hundred percent a tomato” (67). Jenna’s reply “I am not a tomato” (67) expresses her

disillusionment with the reality that in her father’s eyes—through the lens of science—the

significance of her body as a crucial aspect of humanness has been diminished. While Matthew

appeals to the idea that being human is more about the mind’s essence than it is about the

body, Jenna asserts that her physical body is essential to her identity. In this way, the novel

engages in a debate familiar to humanist discourses, as the divisions between mind, body and

soul have historically entailed the corporeal body being perceived as inferior to the other

dimensions that define humanness—a dynamic that continues to persist in the context of

posthumanist debates. Pearson’s novel raises serious questions about the relationship between

the mind and body and the degree to which one is crucial for the existence of the other,

however, this is not a straightforward matter. While Jenna’s parents insist that the remaining ten

percent of her ‘real’ body, the butterfly, is crucial to her humanness, they are quick to dismiss

the rest of her body as significant to her identity. The fact that the butterfly is portrayed as so

critical to the recovery of Jenna’s mind suggests that the body is being viewed as a mere vessel

for housing human consciousness.

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The question of whether Jenna is enhanced or diminished by her altered body and

consciousness deepens the novel’s treatment of what constitutes humanity. As an emerging

posthuman subject, Jenna is perplexed by feelings of insufficiency and excess. On one hand,

she feels that she does not possess enough physical and mental qualities to be regarded as

human, yet on the other hand she recognises that in many ways she exceeds the boundaries

that ordinarily codify humanness. Jenna’s feelings of inadequacy are exacerbated by her sense

that she lacks too many human qualities to ever be regarded as equal to or be accepted by her

human counterparts. Like Saulter’s posthuman gems, who are uncertain about which aspects of

their humanness have been engineered out of their DNA, Jenna wonders about what elements

of her organic human nature are lacking in her altered cyborg form, as she questions: “am I a

new Jenna, the product of technology, changed by what was put in or maybe what was left

out?” (98). Jenna's feelings of being alien and insufficient begin to shift, however, as she is able

to comprehend the abilities now available to her as a result of her cyborg body.

As a cyborg with enhanced, superhuman cognitive processing and sensory perception,

Jenna develops a paradoxical sense of confusion and appreciation for her new abilities. She

learns that the technologically advanced nature of her neurochips places her well beyond

human cognitive limits as her mental processing, senses and memory recall become highly

enhanced. This is apparent when her awareness of time develops from her previously being

unable to grasp the concept to possessing a sharp sense of the time without the aid of external

technologies: “I don’t need to look at my clock. My neurochips know to the second how much

time has passed. It is time. My breaths come in gulps, and in an instant I curse and cherish

neurochips that remember and mimic too much” (126). As Jenna begins to appreciate her new

abilities, the novel’s attitudes towards the idea of the posthuman become increasingly hopeful,

depicting the transition to cyborg consciousness as a potentially life enhancing experience—an

opportunity for moving beyond the limits of the organic human body and mind. However, it is not

until the closing scenes of the narrative, discussed in more detail later in this chapter, that the

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reader is provided with a fuller vision of the enabling potentialities of cyborg embodiment and

consciousness. Jenna's sense that she has been enhanced rather than diminished as a

posthuman is depicted as a gradual awareness that evolves through her experiences and

interactions with others. She may possess ‘superhuman’ capabilities but certainly does not

perceive herself as superhuman.

Embracing the aspects of her posthuman identity that exceed normal human cognitive

and biological boundaries is crucial to Jenna’s movement towards self-acceptance. The

potential of biotechnology to enhance human experience is explored as Jenna gradually comes

to value the extraordinary abilities that her posthuman body has afforded. With time and

experience, Jenna can distinguish between the aspects of her new self that are a product of her

posthuman enhancements, and those aspects that are connected to her former self, prior to the

accident. The recurring intertextual presence of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden throughout the

novel is significant, as Walden is a text that not only represents but culturally has come to stand

for humanity’s unadulterated connection with the natural world and the cultivation of an

authentic human identity in sync with nature. Jenna’s evolving posthuman consciousness is

shaped by her engagement with Walden as she progresses from merely recalling memorised

quotations from the text to being able to reflect on its meaning and generate her own personal

insights. Jenna’s reflection “I wonder if any of the trees from Thoreau’s forest are still alive and

wonder what Thoreau would think today if he could visit my small pond and eucalyptus grove”

(99) depicts her engaging in an imaginative act of speculation. This is a key moment in Jenna’s

journey of being able to distinguish between her human and posthuman nature, prompting her

realisation: “Thoughts like these are not written down or uploaded into my Bio Gel. These

thoughts are mine alone and no one else’s. They exist nowhere in the universe but within me”

(99). As Juli L. Gittinger discusses, human thinking, as opposed to machine ‘thinking,’ “is not

only the ability to process information” but it also entails the ability to formulate “an emotional-

subjective response” (8). At this stage of the novel, readers are presented with a cyborg whose

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cognitive processing extends well beyond the computation of informational data. Jenna is a

posthuman capable of individual thought and emotional sensibilities—conventionally human

traits. Heightened awareness of the blurring of the organic and artificial aspects of her brain

circuitry, coupled with the acknowledgement that her posthumanity has enhanced her sensory

perception, enables Jenna to move closer towards acceptance of her fragmentary cyborg

consciousness. Here, readers are presented with a more affirming attitude towards the

experience of living as a hybrid posthuman subject. Rather than perceiving ‘human’ and

‘artificial’ as two oppositional categories, the cyborg Jenna begins to become more comfortable

with a symbiotic fusion of these elements. The novel endorses a complex conceptualisation of

human identity that accommodates seemingly composite and incompatible fragments of the

self, asserting that an individual can be considered both organic and artificial, human and

machine, and retain their humanity.

Posthuman disembodiment and the split subject

The tension between mind and body is intensified by the one of the most chilling revelations of

the novel—that while one version of Jenna exists in cyborg form, another version exists in the

form of stored consciousness, contained within a small black box in case her new experimental

body fails. Jenna learns that her parents had made the illegal decision to download the contents

of her mind prior to the death of her human body, storing it until her new posthuman body and

brain were secretly constructed by her father’s bioengineering company. As her father

eventually informs her, “we scanned your whole brain and uploaded the information for

safekeeping until we had the rest of the elements in place” (104). Jenna discovers that housed

in three computers are backup copies of her own mind, as well as copies of her old friends,

Kara and Locke, who “died” as a result of their injuries from the car accident that ended Jenna’s

human life. Kara and Locke have not been reincarnated like Jenna into newly constructed

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posthuman bodies, but rather exist solely as stored consciousness. Even though Jenna’s

human consciousness was downloaded, backed up and inserted into her cyborg ‘brain,’ a

process that provided her with a vessel through which her consciousness could be embodied,

she is a split subject—embodied, cyborg Jenna and the disembodied duplicate copy of her

consciousness exist simultaneously. In The Adoration of Jenna Fox, the body matters as a

vehicle for allowing Jenna to express her consciousness and interact with the material world.

What seems less crucial to Jenna’s status as human, at least in the eyes of her parents, is the

matter that constitutes her body. As long as Jenna can be revived in an embodied form, artificial

embodiment is acceptable as long as it adequately simulates the ‘real,’ and provides a physical

vessel through which her experiential existence is possible. From Jenna’s perspective, she finds

it extremely difficult to figure out which version of herself can be classified as real: “Which is the

real me? The one in the closet or the one here on the forest floor” (101). The discovery of her

backup consciousness complicates her search for identity as she must determine whether her

‘true’ identity resides in pre-accident human Jenna, the embodied cyborg Jenna, or the

disembodied backup Jenna.

Young adult science fiction plays a key role in generating popularised ideas about the

relationship between the human brain and technology, inviting readers to entertain the

possibility that visions of being able to download and upload consciousness could at some

future stage become a real-world development. Theorist Susan Schneider discusses

speculation in the field of artificial intelligence that “postbiological” beings could become an

active presence in our human future (5). Schneider details the work of prominent

transhumanists like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil as evidence that there are innovators in

positions of authority who are making it their life’s work to merge biological and machine

intelligence in ways that bring advanced AI out of the realms of science fiction and into our

everyday reality (7). While posthumanist theorists like Donna Haraway, Francesca Ferrando

and Rosi Braidotti perceive their distinctive ideologies as a means of responding to the

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limitations of humanism and rethinking the boundaries between human and Other,

transhumanists optimistically embrace technological advancement as a means of evolving the

human beyond natural limits. Prominent transhumanist advocate Max More explains that:

Transhumanists regard human nature not as an end in itself, not as perfect, and not as

having any claim on our allegiance. Rather, it is just one point along an evolutionary

pathway and we can learn to reshape our own nature in ways we deem desirable and

valuable. By thoughtfully, carefully, and yet boldly applying technology to ourselves, we

can become something no longer accurately described as human - we can become

posthuman. (4)

Debates between transhumanists and biological naturalists have centred around the

predicament of whether or not translating from biological to artificial consciousness interferes

with the integrity of an individual’s identity and status as human. Whether or not some forms of

artificial intelligence can be considered as ‘conscious’ is an ongoing predicament, as many

consider that substituting parts of the human brain with microchips “would end your life as a

conscious being. You’d be what philosophers call a “zombie”—a nonconscious simulacrum of

your earlier self” (Schneider 7). On the other hand, as Schneider asserts, transhumanists—a

group in which we can rightly place Pearson’s Matthew Fox—believe that it is possible and

beneficial to download and upload human consciousness just as you would with a computer

program:

many proponents of radical enhancement fail to appreciate that the enhanced being may

not be you. They tend to sympathize with a conception of the mind that says the mind is

a software program. According to them, you can enhance your brain hardware in radical

ways and still run the same program, so your mind still exists. Just as you can upload

and download a computer file, your mind, as a program, could be uploaded to the cloud.

This is a technophile’s route to immortality—the mind’s new “afterlife,” if you will, that

outlives the body. (Schneider 7-8)

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Schneider’s work is helpful for considering the two different philosophical positions of Jenna’s

parents and her grandmother, Lily. Matthew and Claire believe that Jenna’s human essence is

not lost in the process of downloading and uploading her consciousness, whereas in Lily’s view,

Jenna has been transformed into a radically different being. As a primarily ‘postbiological’

creation, in both her embodied and disembodied states, Jenna is a subject split between the

‘real’ and simulated versions of herself who must decide which of the two positions provides her

the chance to construct an authentic sense of self.

The narrative’s deeply unsettling portrayal of disembodied experience is conveyed

through Jenna’s initially unplaceable memories of being trapped in darkness and isolation in a

nightmarish realm without escape. The horror of existing in only a disembodied state is

compellingly captured in both the verse chapters and Jenna’s internal monologue as she

reflects on her forgotten experience of being suspended as, in her father’s words, mere

“uploaded information” (104). Jenna’s memories of that space, suspended between life and

death, are of utter suffering: “That environment was my hell. My black void I didn’t understand.

My endless vacuum where I suffocated, screamed, cried, but no one came to help me. My own

father put me there” (68). These memories of the traumatic experience of existing in a

suspended state of disembodiment highlight a strong incongruence between what Matthew Fox

assumed would happen when he isolated and stored Jenna’s consciousness and the horrifying

reality. His belief was that the ‘real’ Jenna would be revived when her stored consciousness was

uploaded into the butterfly, and until then, the disembodied Jenna was merely an inert,

immaterial mass of data. Despite the realities of Jenna’s experiences, her parents contend that

their ‘groundbreaking’ experiment with uploading the information of her brain allowed them to

‘crack the code’ of how to store and replicate human consciousness in a new form. Their

justifications for experimenting with the consciousnesses of the adolescents hinge on the

argument that in a disembodied form, these consciousnesses were merely “bits of information”

(104). This reductive belief in the disembodied mind as information echoes the sentiments of

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posthumanists in the real world who anticipate a progression towards cyborg and even post-

cyborg identity, which characterise people as “reducible to their data, and society and humanity

are seen as mere information” (Caval Pascual 10). Pearson’s narrative directly challenges such

assumptions via Jenna’s subjective voice as she contends that in her disembodied state she

was more than mere information, and that rather than sustaining the hierarchical mind/body

binary, the body should be equally important to defining human identity. Jenna’s constant

questioning probes into long standing assumptions about how to define human consciousness

as she inquires, “Is that all I was? All those months, my thoughts crammed into a formless

world? Only bits of information? And if that’s all I was then, am I any more than that now? I just

have better packaging” (104). The protagonist’s persistent introspection is a narrative strategy

that Pearson employs to underscore that questions concerning what it means to be human are

actively contested by posthuman forms of existence.

The concern of being trapped between two identities, the childhood and the adolescent, is

made even more complex by Pearson’s representation of the disembodied posthuman mind.

Pearson uses posthuman disembodiment to literalise the experience of split subjectivity—the

mindset that two competing identities exist that cannot be easily reconciled. Jenna’s memories

of entrapment in her disembodied form before her consciousness was inserted into her cyborg

body highlight that she considered herself neither living nor dead according to conventional

definitions of human existence that require both a conscious mind and physical body to be

classified as a living being: “I think of the dark place, where I was nowhere at all. Trapped, dead,

but alive” (71). Science-fiction critic Scott Bukatman discusses the dream of “terminal identity”

that permits individuals to operate in ways that render them as networked and “multiple” (NP).

Bukatman defines terminal identity as a state of being that exists beyond the physical human

body, which “must serve as the locus for any [technological] interface” that permits access to

alternative digital realities (NP). We see this liberating vision of an individual subject able to exist

in a disembodied state in the transcendent cybersubjects that populate the cyberpunk

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landscapes of novels such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Clearly, Jenna’s experience of

disembodiment is antithetical to this dream of disembodied freedom that awaits the digitally

nomadic cyber-subject. In contrast to the optimistic “dream,” Jenna’s ordeal is one of frightening

containment—far from the fantasy of escaping the limitations of physical embodiment. Matthew

Fox’s participation in the dream of disembodied consciousness is highlighted through the

language he uses to explain his perspective as he defends his decisions: “it’s a mind without

any sensory input. It’s like limbo or a dreamworld” (102). Jenna’s testimony, “Trust me, it’s not a

dreamworld. Not by a long shot. It’s more like a nightmare” (102), offers an impression of

disembodied consciousness as incarcerating rather than liberating. Contrary to the cyberpunk

imaginary’s portrayal of corporeality as far more limiting that virtual reality, Jenna’s rejection of

the “dream” of disembodiment asserts the value of the body as an escape that enables access

to an experiential life through which consciousness can be expressed.

Jenna’s burgeoning self-determination is clear in her increased confidence and conviction.

This is evident when Jenna determines that the new version of herself that has created new

experiences and gained fresh insights is the identity she chooses to keep, as she asserts: “New

images from my new life. Images that are not in my backup. That’s a different Jenna. I want to

keep the Jenna that I am now” (102). Jenna must make complex, difficult choices as the

narrative moves towards the climax, and her decision-making processes are grounded in deep

moral and ontological questioning. Jenna associates the experience of disembodiment with

intense suffering and isolation, and although having a backup of her consciousness gives her a

form of posthuman immortality, she cannot morally reconcile the choice to continue suspending

the disembodied backup versions of herself, Kara, and Locke in such a torturous state of

existence indefinitely. Jenna’s awareness that “another Jenna is still there” (102), trapped in “a

place with no dimension, no depth, no heat, no cold, but immeasurable amounts of darkness

and solitude” (102), triggers her ultimate act of defiance against the varying forms of control her

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parents have exploited as a result of her posthuman state—her decision to destroy the backup

copies.

Rebellion against parental controls as a posthuman—both embodied and disembodied—

takes a different form for cyborg Jenna than it did for human Jenna. As a posthuman, Jenna

must stake a claim over the nature of her existence and in order to truly gain autonomy this

means having the power to make choices concerning her body and mind. It is this power to

make decisions on her own terms that really matters to Jenna, exposing that at the heart of her

quest is an unwavering desire to regain the power of choice. This motivation is made patent

when Jenna weighs up the negative and positive aspects of continuing to exist in both

embodied and disembodied forms: “Do I really want to live for two hundred years? Then again,

do I want to live for only two either? Is that decision up to me? I am nearly eighteen [. . .] An

eighteen-year-old thing that can make a choice?” (90). The events of the novel culminate in her

act of stealing and destroying the backup copies, throwing the black boxes into the pond outside

of the Fox’s family home in plain view of her distressed parents. This climactic moment is a

symbol of Jenna gaining control over the remaining vestiges of her humanity: “I need my own

life. I pull it loose and cross an invisible boundary from immortal to mortal” (127); “The final fall

of Jenna Fox. A mere girl, like any other” (127). For Jenna this means sacrificing her immortality

and accepting the risk that her unpredictable posthuman body may not exist beyond its “shelf

life” (67). Ultimately, this act of radical agency presents a retreat away from the posthuman as

Jenna has made the firm determination to gain some autonomy over her mortality: “I breathe in

the difference of being on this earth now and maybe not tomorrow, the precipitous edge of

something new for me but as ancient as the beginning of time” (129). Jenna’s quest for

autonomy and self-understanding culminates in her philosophical, ontological and moral

maturation, which enables her to seize the power to define what it means to be human on her

own terms, outside of the limits imposed by legal and social constructs.

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The nature of the soul in a posthuman world

The novel’s intermingling of spirituality and biotechnology raises interesting ideas regarding the

emphasis of posthumanism on the materiality of the body and mind as sites that can be altered.

The question of whether Jenna’s soul has been retained in her cyborg body or “left behind” (71)

with her human one dramatises her sense of lacking the requisite qualities for humanness.

Probing pre-humanist, humanist and posthumanist beliefs regarding what defines the human,

the narrative invites young adult readers to consider a possible way out of the mind-body

problem by implying that the soul cannot simply be cast aside in the transition to posthumanity.

The closing of the novel draws together complex concerns regarding the existence of the soul

and mortality in ways that indicate a rejection of both humanist and posthumanist ontologies.

Instead, Jenna’s choices affirm classical, pre-humanist spiritual beliefs in the presence of the

soul as an immaterial facet of the human that permits a different form of corporeal

transcendence than that experienced by Jenna in her disembodied state. Lily nurtures Jenna’s

exploration of her spiritual self, encouraging her to embrace faith in the existence of the soul as

a solution to her ontological predicament.

In the earlier stages of the narrative, the relationship between body and soul is a

prominent philosophical concern for Jenna and Lily, who are both perplexed by the notion that

Jenna’s altered biology has interfered with the more spiritual aspects of her human

consciousness. The question of whether or not the spiritual dimension of humanity is detached

from biology becomes a source of strong anxiety for Jenna, who wonders where the soul

resides in an individual. Such questions underscore the dangers of a posthuman reality in which

a core aspect of ‘being human’—the spirit—is perceived as irrelevant to existence. Pearson

opens the reader to such questions via Jenna: “If I believe in such a thing as a soul, did it take

flight with a glistening handful of tissue? Does the soul cling to the last vestige of humanity until

there is no more? If a soul can reside in a fistful of embryo, why not a fistful of white matter?”

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(101). Jenna’s reflection on the intricate relationship between body and soul—and what might

be at stake if untempered scientific advancement intervenes in an individual’s process of

constructing identity—engages young adult readers to perceive that the transition to posthuman

entails the sacrifice of the spiritual dimensions of human identity. Jenna’s quest to locate her

soul in her new posthuman form is initially fraught with anxious, angry backlash against her

father for his blatant disregard for intangible dimensions of the human. Jenna challenges the

certainty with which her father, relying on his status as a doctor and scientist, has defined her as

“one hundred percent human” (70), protesting: “What about a soul, Father? When you were so

busy implanting all your neural chips, did you think about that? Did you snip my soul from my

old body, too? Where did you put it? Show me! Where? Where in all this groundbreaking

technology did you insert my soul?” (70). Jenna’s abrasive dialogue directly calls into question

the materialist nature of modern science that narrows human knowledge down to discrete

discourses concerning tangible, observable phenomena. Science does not ordinarily provide

answers to questions of the immaterial world. The dimension of spirituality creates a triadic

dynamic—of body, mind and soul—when scientists like Matthew Fox are far more comfortable

with the neat binary. As a product of ‘groundbreaking’ biotechnological engineering, Jenna’s

construction was governed by her world’s most advanced scientific knowledge of the human

body and mind. Within the novel, the material body and the mind as a force of energy that can

be harnessed and suspended both represent the aspects of the human being that science can

tangibly observe. The overall trajectory of the narrative, however, asserts that there is far more

to human identity than the tangible mind and body, as the spiritual dimension of the self persists

beyond the reach of scientific explanation and experimentation.

The novel’s questioning of where the soul resides and what its role is in ascribing or

locating humanness within an individual both challenges and defines notions of personhood.

Jenna’s vehement protest also raises the question of whether human beings can be replicated

in their fully realised form, bearing a mind, body and soul—the elements that according to Jenna

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and Lily are requisite for being human. Earlier in her journey, when Jenna enters the church and

approaches the symbol of the cross, she relates her sense of “feeling like an imposter, waiting

to be found out any moment and ushered out” (84), as she remains uncertain about the

presence of her soul. The feeling that she is “trespassing” (84) in the church is indicative of the

alienness and exclusion she experiences as she attempts to grasp what it feels like to possess

a soul. Her revelation, “But who knows what a soul feels like?” (84) presents a challenge to

definitions of being human that depend upon the existence of a spiritual dimension that remains

inexplicable and intangible for humans and posthumans alike.

When Jenna destroys the backup copy of her mind she is rejecting both humanist and

posthumanist conceptualisations of human existence and placing her faith in pre-humanist

definitions of what it is to be human. The explanations of the human mind and body provided by

her father, the voice of scientific authority, do not sate Jenna’s curiosity about what constitutes

the human. Definitions of the corporeal body and mind—regardless of whether they are human

or posthuman—couched in material terms that describe biological form and functionality, leave

Jenna in a state of constant questioning about the nature of existence. For Jenna,

understanding existence is not all about reconciling the tension between corporeality and the

mind. The division of body and soul has long been an existential conflict, and in spiritual and

religious teachings primacy is given to the soul’s transcendent quality as an entity to be severed

from the earthly physical body at death. Jenna’s existential concerns are eventually reconciled

by the affirmation of her spiritual dimension as an integral aspect of her identity, a rite of

passage which culminates in her baptism. As Lily dips her fingers in holy water, raises them to

Jenna’s forehead and says “Some things aren’t meant to be known. Only believed” (130), Jenna

realises that if having belief in the existence of the soul is a satisfactory confirmation of

humanness for Lily, then it must also be enough for herself: “A drop on my forehead. Hardly

enough to feel. But still enough for Lily. And maybe enough for me. Washing away the old,

believing in the new. The world has changed. So have I” (130). Therefore, for the posthuman

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cyborg Jenna, faith that the soul has remained intact within the ten percent organic matter that

she still possesses must be sufficient. Belief in the immortality of the soul as an intangible

dimension of the self that exists outside of both the body and mind grants Jenna an altogether

different form of immortality from what she could obtain as a cyborg. While this moment can be

perceived as side-stepping questions of posthuman subjectivity raised earlier in the narrative,

Pearson’s construction of a spiritual cyborg—with authentic desires, agency over her beliefs and

her ability make bold choices that shape her existence and identity—asserts a more complex

conceptualisation of the posthuman as a conscious, autonomous and multidimensional subject.

In the novel’s final chapter, set two hundred and sixty years later, Jenna’s social transition

from illegal nonhuman to accepted posthuman, as her external political world gradually shifts to

accommodate new forms of subjectivity and embodiment, carries more than personal

significance. This ending embraces posthuman possibilities as it is set in a changed society

where bioengineering of the human body has become the norm and Jenna’s ten percent

biological makeup has become the new standard: “The Jenna Standard” (132); “There are

others like us now. The world is more accepting” (132). Pearson’s portrayal of a distant

posthuman future at the close of the novel in which Jenna’s “ten percent human” identity has

been accepted as the minimum standard invites young readers to conceive of a social world in

which conceptions of who counts as human can be contested and renegotiated. Jenna lives as

a posthuman woman who has well exceeded her predicted lifespan. In this sense, Jenna is

living as the embodiment of the unintended and unknowable side effects of bioengineering.

Philosophical questions concerning the significance of mortality to an individual’s identity are

somewhat glossed over by this abrupt flashforward, and the resolution’s tone of calm optimism

juxtaposes the dramatic intensity of Jenna’s adolescent crises. On one level, this has the effect

of diminishing her earlier questions and concerns as circumstantial and even perhaps the

product of teen angst. However, the ending also offers an optimistic rendering of the capacity for

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social values to shift in accordance with posthumanity, thereby becoming more accommodating

of difference and opening up possibilities for new definitions of humanity and personhood.

Jenna’s coming-of-age process is projected far into the future to suggest that the

dilemmas she faced as an adolescent can be resolved and that, as the first cyborg posthuman

of her kind, what was actually groundbreaking about her existence was her ability to provoke

radical shifts in her society. Attitudes towards difference and posthuman embodiment in this

imagined future have shifted alongside definitions of what constitutes human nature. These

attitudinal changes are evidenced in Jenna’s self-acceptance as she reflects on her ability to

view her own deviance from the organic human being through a far lighter lens than she could

as an adolescent. Jenna relates her transition from being classified as illegal to “being

inappropriate,” “Bio Gel has been modified for future recipients so that no one lives beyond an

‘acceptable and appropriate’ time. In our age, Allys and I giggle about being inappropriate”

(132), revealing that in their adult maturity both Jenna and Allys have come to terms with how

they are perceived by their society. As Jenna explains, “We laugh easier now about a lot of

things” (132), conveying the sense of comfort and ease with which they have both come to

regard their posthumanity in adulthood. As a posthuman adult, Jenna has resolved the political,

ontological and existential predicaments with which she was confronted as an adolescent. She

has overcome the unique controls and limitations imposed on her in her embodied and

disembodied posthuman forms, and has transitioned to the status of legal personhood as a

result of her own political advocacy and shifting social values.

Reconciling the tension between science and religious faith was also a key aspect of

Jenna’s journey, as she comes to understand that discourses associated with both forms of

defining human existence are crucial: “Faith and science, I have learned, are two sides of the

same coin, separated by an expanse so small, but wide enough that one side can’t see the

other. They don’t even know they’re connected. Father and Lily were two sides of the same

coin, I’ve decided, and maybe I am the space in between” (131). Jenna’s process of

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reconciliation, achieved via the unification of seemingly conflicting perspectives of human

nature, suggests the novel’s attitude that the movement towards posthumanity does not

necessarily negate preceding belief systems and definitions of human identity. In this way, The

Adoration of Jenna Fox endorses the view that ideologically, posthumanity can be characterised

as a continuation of prehumanist and humanist conceptions of human existence, rather than an

epistemic break that propels us into a radically alternative future.

Conclusion

The approach to posthuman identity expressed in Pearson’s novel is distinctive in its richly

detailed portrait of an individual’s quest for self-definition and autonomy. In portraying the

subjective complexities of reconstructing identity as a posthuman Other, the narrative engages

young adult readers to consider how the intersection of technology and the body influence

selfhood. As Jenna negotiates a range of complex tensions—mind and body; artificial and real;

subject and object; human and machine; embodied and disembodied; material and immaterial;

rational and spiritual—we recognise that the process of defining what it is to be human evokes a

series of existential and ontological questions that cannot be easily answered.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox utilises the reconstruction of a cyborg subject to invite deep

questioning of existing boundaries that accommodate some individuals and groups under the

banner of the human, while excluding others who cannot be readily placed within discrete

oppositional categories of identity. Hybrid figures like the human/machine cyborgs represented

by both Cinder and Jenna, and as we will see in the following chapter on Julianna Baggott’s

novel, Pure, the fused human/Other ‘wretches,’ are threatening in their ability to provoke

dramatic revisioning of human boundaries. As a protagonist, Jenna Fox is not merely a symbolic

threat to existing conceptions of the human—her very existence prompts ideological and

societal change. The challenging pathway to autonomy and social acceptance undertaken by

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Jenna presents existence as a hybrid composite of human and machine as far from the

seamless integration of oppositional identities endorsed by Haraway’s version of the cyborg.

Jenna’s ongoing struggle to come to terms with her cyborg nature is shaped by a series of

predicaments that invite readers to recognise that cultivating a discrete ethics of the posthuman

is a crucial project for ensuring that technological advancement is tempered by deep moral

consideration.

In positioning various discourses of human identity against each other, Pearson’s novel

opens readers to the tensions between pre-humanist, humanist and posthumanist values that

have significant bearing on who and what is considered as Other in any given society. The

narrative depicts intricate relationships between mind, body and soul that are dramatically

affected by dominant belief systems, whether scientific or spiritual. Pearson’s construction of a

protagonist who is antagonistic to the posthuman project despite her cyborg embodiment is a

narrative strategy that allows the novel to probe such conflicting viewpoints. On a metonymic

level, Jenna’s quest for personal agency as she liberates herself from parental control and

claims her status as a legal citizen presents a coming-of-age narrative that speaks to the

potential to retain individual autonomy over our own minds and bodies—and yes, even our

souls—in a rapidly advancing technocentric society. In its complex depiction of a protagonist’s

intensely personal experience of grappling with embodied difference and posthuman

subjectivity, The Adoration of Jenna Fox stands as an example of women’s young adult science

fiction that speaks to the revision of identity politics in the twenty-first century to accommodate

hybrid, fragmented modes of being and becoming. In this regard, the novel serves as an apt

example of how this evolving subgenre can contribute valuable insights to conversations

concerning the ethics and politics of the posthuman.

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CHAPTER 3

Fused Hybrids and the Politics of Difference in Julianna Baggott’s Pure (2012)

Julianna Baggott’s young adult novel Pure (2012), the first in her trilogy, presents a post-

apocalyptic world populated by horrifying posthuman creations. The novel uses varying forms of

posthuman embodiment, including heterogenous variations of the ‘fused’ hybrid and

technologically enhanced bodies, to undermine humanist categories of the biological human. In

light of the ways in which the hybrid, monstrous or technologically altered bodies of characters

in Pure shape patterns of exclusion, the narrative can also be read as an interrogation of how

political categories of race, gender and disability serve to Other certain individuals and groups in

the real world. Baggott sets her narrative in the aftermath of a genocidal 'final solution' scenario

where the environment and the majority of the human population have been ravaged by

‘Detonations’ akin to nuclear explosions. She uses the richly realised iconography of a melted,

incinerated nuclear wasteland to aptly convey the legacy of the 1945 Hiroshima bombings that

inspired her vision. Pure’s posthuman landscapes—hostile, unpredictable and disordered—give

birth to a variety of hybrid life forms that symbolise the devastation produced by technological

abuse. In doing so, they challenge ontological taxonomies that reinforce difference as a means

of defining human identity.

Depicting a world in which Western humanist boundaries that segregate human from

Other have been ruptured, Baggott’s project throughout Pure is to explore perceptions of what

can be regarded as human by destabilising associations between ‘normal’ human embodiment

and definitions of the human. As disability studies theorist Rosemarie Garland Thomson

asserts, in an “economy of visual difference” that positions the “beautiful or perfect” as superior

to the “grotesque or ugly,” “those bodies deemed inferior become spectacles of otherness while

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the unmarked are sheltered in the neutral space of normalcy” (8). This cultural dichotomy is

vividly represented in Pure’s narrative of a population divided on the basis of narrow paradigms

that assess ‘pure’ bodies as worthy of status and privilege, while “corporeal otherness” (Garland

Thomson 5) is designated to those perceived as ‘monstrous,’ ‘mutilated’ or ‘deformed’ in relation

to the pure standard. The novel presents a complex rendering of how cultural perceptions of

purity and deviance form a dangerous binary that is both utilised by authorities to empower or

disempower certain groups, and internalised by those deemed deviant—dramatically influencing

the construction of subjective identity for minorities.

Whereas in Pearson’s novel the focus centres around Jenna’s introspective questioning

of whether she can be regarded as human despite her artificial body, Pure approaches the

question of how to define humanity by offering a range of different forms of posthuman

embodiment. What is human is portrayed as relative, and the category of the human is

presented as a culturally constructed phenomenon rather than a universal given. Both Meyer’s

Cinder and Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox utilise the posthuman trope of cyborg

embodiment, and to varying degrees, cyborg subjectivity to offer a form of body and

consciousness alternative to conventional humanist models of human identity. Pearson’s novel

in particular portrays posthuman embodiment, consciousness and identity as distinct from the

human, offering an alternative model of being. Pure, in contrast, uses posthuman bodies that

are far more graphic in their various deformations and ruptures from “normal” human

embodiment, yet its resounding message regarding the shift from humanist to posthumanist

ontologies is strikingly more conservative than the other two young adult novels examined. As

this chapter argues, Pure presents particular internal qualities as markers for humanness that

can enable even the most ostensibly posthuman figures to be judged as worthy of human

identity. The novel, therefore, while radical in its portrayal of bodies made grotesquely

posthuman by technological destruction, holds an apparently humanist outlook in its distinct

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longing for humanity to be recognised in those whose bodies authorities have deemed deviant

from the idealised norm.

Of the three young adult novels, Pure offers the most complex portrait of a divided

society rife with prejudice and injustice inflicted on its variant Others. Within the narrative, we

are informed that prior to the Detonations, a small proportion of the population, the wealthiest

and most socially connected, were selected to inhabit a purposefully built Dome that keeps

them in, and keeps Others out. Baggott constructs a world in which the surviving humans (those

who still function as humans) are divided into two separate posthuman populations: the

ostensibly human, unblemished ‘Pures’ protected inside the Dome, and the fused, disfigured

‘wretches’ struggling to survive outside the Dome and deemed no longer human by the Pures.

Portraying a society divided between the domed carceral city and the ravaged wastelands, Pure

explores humanity's use of posthuman technologies to enact its most destructive and

exclusionary tendencies. Baggott does not glorify the posthuman creations that emerge from the

rubble of her apocalypse. We are not confronted in Pure with the emancipatory forms of

posthumanity from Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, which promotes the embrace of

fragmentation and multiplicity as human and technology are fused in an ideological unsettling of

binary logic. Instead, in viewing Pure it is useful to consider a more recent vision of

posthumanism, articulated by Rosi Braidotti:

we need to keep in mind that declaring some categories human or not is a way of

indexing access to powers and entitlements. So that we cannot take either the human or

the posthuman as neutral categories, nor can we imagine that any jump over the human

is immediately and intrinsically liberatory. To be posthuman does not mean that you are

post power, post class, post gender and post violence, quite on the contrary and in some

ways […] the contemporary globalised world exacerbates those relationships of power,

domination […] expulsion and eviction of so many people. (Keynote Lecture)

Braidotti’s version of posthumanity is reflected within the vision of injustice offered in Pure,

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where power struggles, violence and classism persist in the afterworld of cataclysm.

Posthumanity, as experienced by the wretches, is devastating, degrading and deadly, and

readers witness the carnage wrought by the Detonations on both the landscape and its

population.

Rather than human and Other being pitted against one another as oppositional

categories, within Pure amalgamations of human, animal, earth and object produce a new

spectrum of posthuman embodiment. During the Detonations, authorities intentionally released

“biosynthesizing nanotechnologies” (Baggott 310) to create a subservient population of people

who were fused to animals, other people, objects, foreign matter and the earth. The idea of

being ‘fused’ resonates with the posthuman imaginary in that the discrete boundaries that

separate individual humans from other humans, other life forms and even inanimate objects are

utterly dissolved. The narrative reveals that the Detonations were released “for the sole purpose

of fusing survivors to the world around them, just to create a subhuman class, a new order of

slaves, to serve them in New Eden once the earth was rejuvenated” (310). In what follows I

examine multiple different forms of fused human/Other hybrids that populate Baggott’s

narrative, produced from either the Detonation event or the radiation that created additional

mutations in the offspring of survivors. As the narrator relates: “The mutations caused by the

Detonations settled deep into the survivors’ genes. Babies aren't born Pure. They are mutated,

born with traces of their parents’ deformities. Animals too. Instead of starting anew, the breeds

only seem to get more convoluted, a mix of human, animal, earth, objects” (28). The wretches

include humans fused to other humans, known as Groupies; humans fused to animals, known

as Beasts; and Dusts, those fused with the earth.

Disability studies theorist Margrit Shildrick poses a pertinent question in asking: “Why is

it that at the beginning of the twenty-first century — with its multiple geo-political insecurities and

anxieties, its distinctly ambivalent expectations of the future, and its growing awareness of

internal pressures — the western world and its developed counterparts should be so unsettled

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by anomalous embodiment?” (Dangerous Discourses 1). Indeed, the unsettling nature of bodies

that are different or deviant from “some putative norm” (Shildrick, Dangerous Discourses 1) lies

in their ability to exceed conventional morphological boundaries that segregate self from Other.

Discourses that examine the social anxieties induced by human bodies that are classified as

‘disabled’ or ‘deformed’ provide a productive framework for discussing the politics of the fused

posthuman bodies in Pure. Shildrick’s theories concerning bodies that are characterised as

interdependent or connected in ways that exceed the limits of the singular, distinct and

autonomous body are particularly pertinent—her work presents “hybrid creatures, conjoined

twins, human clones [and] cyborg embodiment” (Embodying the Monster 2) as clear examples

of interdependent bodies in both real and fictional worlds.

The fused bodies in Pure undermine the expectation of “closure and self-sufficiency”

(Embodying the Monster 1) that Shildrick argues is a determinant for assessing subjectivity or

personhood in people living with bodies that “radically disrupt morphological expectations”

(Embodying the Monster 2) as they are not “fully containable within the binary structure of the

western logos” (Embodying the Monster 1). Hybrid or fused bodies disturb the neat ideal of the

“inviolable self/body that is secure, distinct, closed and autonomous” (Embodying the Monster

51) as their boundaries are vulnerable, permeable and unstable. The notion that those figures

whose bodies do not fit within normative limits do not qualify as human subjects is also taken up

by Shildrick who highlights an assumption that “if sovereign minds are housed in appropriate

bodies, then those who are ‘inappropriate/d others’ cannot occupy unproblematically the subject

position” (Embodying the Monster 51). Baggott’s novel engages with the relationship between

“deviant” embodiment and subjectivity by using the posthuman trope of the fused hybrid body to

explore who or what counts as a subject. As this chapter asserts, Pure’s spectrum of

posthuman embodiment places life forms on a scale from human to non-human that grants

subjectivity to some creatures and denies it to others. Those deemed most “monstrous” in their

deviation from humanist ideals are ultimately excluded from being counted as a subject. Just as

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Shildrick’s work invites us to reconsider our assumptions regarding corporeal norms that work to

assign or deny personhood, so too does Pure succeed in utilising hybrid figures to interrogate

“the narrow canons of normality” (Embodying the Monster 55) and the politics of Othering.

Garland Thomson also provides an insightful observation that resonates with Pure,

arguing that “the cultural other and the cultural self operate together as opposing twin figures

that legitimate a system of social, economic, and political empowerment justified by

physiological differences” (8). In Baggott’s novel, ‘pure’ authorities perceive physical ‘deviance’

and ‘monstrosity’ as a clear measure of subhumanity that can be used to disenfranchise the

physically ‘flawed,’ while physical “purity” is inextricably tethered to humanness. However, the

wretches experience far more complicated relationships with their own embodied differences

and each other. For the wretches, the attribution of humanness is far less dualistic and centred

on physical qualities, as they consider deeper dimensions of behaviour, emotional valence and

compassion, and recognise variance as an already existing, intrinsic aspect of being human.

While in the novels of Meyer and Pearson the emphasis of the narratives is on accepting

posthuman qualities of fragmentation and multiplicity as an alternative form of identity to the

conventionally human, in Pure, and, as we will see, in Saulter’s Gemsigns, the pathway for

oppressed minorities to be granted empowerment lies in dismantling associations between

embodied difference and deviance in determining who can be classified as human, and thereby

worthy of rights and liberties. Humanist aspirations evidently prevail in these latter novels as

posthuman figures struggle to be recognised as more than ‘subhuman’ by altering the manner in

which economies of difference operate in their respective societies.

Following the journeys of wretch characters Pressia, El Capitan and Bradwell, the novel

condemns the injustices perpetrated by Dome authorities. In doing so, it challenges narrow

definitions of the ideal human leveraged by Dome authorities to relegate the wretches to a

subhuman underclass, and challenges the politics of segregation that stem from this. Indeed,

Pure’s central conflict is between the Dome authorities’ deadly vision of posthuman ‘evolution’

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and the resistance of individuals both outside and within the Dome who rally against their

authority. Readers are introduced to the viewpoints of characters on both sides of the struggle,

as the adolescent Pures Partridge and Lyda uncover the deadly intent behind the Detonations,

as well as the social conditioning and technological manipulation that shapes the minds and

bodies of Dome inhabitants. The protagonists gradually discover that the Detonations were

designed by the key antagonist in Baggott’s plot, scientist and engineer Ellery Willux, to propel

his startling vision of a ‘New Eden,’ as part of a complex strategy to wipe out the majority of

humanity to begin afresh. As a result, wretches Pressia, El Capitan, and Bradwell, as well as

Partridge and later Lyda, attempt to intervene in the Dome’s plans for a New Eden.

In the first section of this chapter I consider how Baggott’s construction of an atypical

adolescent heroine, Pressia, offers a humanising portrayal of a posthuman girl who comes to

recognise that her internal qualities of courage, fortitude and endurance, rather than her

physical embodiment, express her human nature. The novel evokes sympathy for Pressia’s

journey as she attempts to come to terms with the changes the Detonations have wrought in her

young life. Pressia bears a doll’s head instead of one of her hands, having become fused to the

doll she was clutching during the Detonations. She transitions from a self-conscious girl who

defines her identity according to her distinctive fusion and scars to a confident, competent

warrior who eventually perceives her disfigurements as signs of strength. As I argue, Pressia’s

character arc reflects a key premise of the novel: defining human identity in Pure’s posthuman

world requires looking beyond reductive definitions that emphasise physicality and biology as

crucial determinants of what is human.

In the second section I examine how Baggott utilises the figure of the fused hybrid to

interrogate humanist myths that define human identity according to rigid binary oppositions.

Both inside and outside the Dome, people are redefining what is human in the wake of

apocalypse. From the perspective of Dome authorities and Pures, the wretches are subhuman,

abject beings, while the wretches themselves classify some human/Other hybrids as human,

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and others that have lost particular traits nonhuman. The posthumans in Pure range from those

still distinctly human despite their fusions, to extremely degraded life forms reduced to

subhuman status by their fusions. Indeed, the Beasts, Dusts, and Groupies are labelled

according to the particular form of embodied deviance that makes each of these posthumans

distinct. In constructing a spectrum of posthuman embodiment among the wretches, the

narrative creates empathy for their struggles as they resist their classification and treatment as

subhuman.

In the third section I discuss Baggott’s depictions of a society in which the agendas of

the powerful influence the politics of inclusion and exclusion, revealing the devastating

outcomes produced by an authority’s contempt for difference. I argue that the vision of Dome

leaders in Pure mirrors those who engineered mass scale acts of atrocity witnessed during the

twentieth century, where the quest to ‘improve’ humanity in the name of purity led to genocidal

destruction of marginalised populations. The novel in fact reveals that the self-designated Pures

do not actually meet the model of the ideal ‘pure’ human, as we learn that Willux’s vision of an

ideal society means that the populace inside the Dome are being indoctrinated, monitored, and

in some cases genetically enhanced. Willux has created a form of biotechnological engineering

called ‘coding’ to create a breed of elite, “enhanced” posthumans, extending the spectrum of

this novel’s posthuman imaginary to include the ‘super’ human. The haphazard fusions that

created the wretches outside the Dome, and the ‘superhuman’ Pures radically altered by

posthuman enhancement, are exposed as a parallel that complicates definitions of the human.

The novel thus engages with the posthuman in complex and sometimes conflicting

ways. Pure presents an intricate rendering of the different ways certain people can be classified

as human or Other, raising questions about how to categorise the human in the face of abject

degradation in the case of the wretches, and radical technological augmentation in the case of

the Pures. On one level, in portraying the intentional segregation of the Pure and wretch

populations, the novel condemns humanist categories of identity that produce hierarchies in

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which certain individuals or groups are rendered inferior or excluded. On another level, Pure

upholds humanist sensibilities in the face of what is presented as the inhumane vision of Ellery

Willux: if bodily integrity and wholeness is no longer the measure of the human, how do we

define humanity? Through sympathetic posthuman figures who are humanised by their internal

traits, the novel suggests that an individual’s values, behaviours and relationships are far more

crucial to determining their humanity than their embodiment. The wretches may appear

posthuman on the surface, in appearance and as products of technological abuse, but their

interiority is not quite so posthuman.

Baggott herself has expressed her privileging of the human as a category that should

endure, stating: “When people say that Pure is too bleak for them, I refuse to apologize. What

we’ve done to our fellow man is far more horrific than anything I wrote. Pure isn’t about the

apocalypse. It’s about what endures – hope, faith, love” (Gay). So, while Pure is deeply invested

in the posthuman imaginary by way of its depictions of hybrid fused bodies produced by

disastrous abuses of technology, traditionally human—or even humanist—interests are upheld

by the narrative. Human struggles persist and human desires govern the quests of key

characters as ultimately, values of love, justice, restoration and hope persist in Pure’s

posthuman world.

Pressia, the fused girl body and posthuman subjectivity

In the early twenty-first century, as novels such as Cinder, Pure and Saulter’s Gemsigns testify,

stories told from the perspectives of disfigured, “deviant” and mutated characters have become

prominent in posthuman science fiction. Pure portrays characters as victims of disfigurement,

amputation and fusions that violate the human body’s integrity, eliciting reader empathy for

these characters. In Cinder and The Adoration of Jenna Fox the central figure is an individual

cyborg girl whose body is subjected to intrusive forms of scientific experimentation; in Pure,

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Baggott presents a spectrum of embodiment that encourages us to empathise with certain

forms, like the focal wretch female, Pressia, while radically dehumanising others. Like Cinder

and Jenna, Pure’s female protagonist must come to accept her posthuman body. Unlike Jenna,

Pressia is not alone: in the aftermath of the apocalypse, the bodies of the wretches are

startingly heterogeneous as any even approximate uniformity in human embodiment has been

destroyed. For Pressia, the process of adjusting to her doll-head fist and scars is initially fraught

with self-consciousness and resentment, reflective of her internalisation of a standard that

classifies her disability and physical form as “deviant.” Garland Thomson expresses her view

that the construction of certain bodies as inferior or superior derives from culturally inscribed

narratives: “The narrative of deviance surrounding bodies considered different is paralleled by a

narrative of universality surrounding bodies that correspond to notions of the ordinary or the

superlative” (7). In order to overcome her feelings of inferiority and self-disgust, Pressia’s

journey of learning to accept her fused body unfolds as she comes to perceive being human as

more associated with the qualities of resilience, survival, self-discovery, compassion and

camaraderie, than the function and appearance of the physical body. As Pressia moves from

the self-focused mindset of an adolescent fixated on her own physical and psychological

struggles to the mindset of a revolutionary focused on the collective struggle of the wretch

population, Pure develops a posthuman heroine who resists typical models of adolescent

girlhood both in terms of her embodiment and how she comes to defy it. The introspective

questioning that aided Jenna in her eventual self-acceptance is not evident in this protagonist's

personal quest, where building interpersonal relationships grounded in trust and camaraderie is

far more crucial.

As a young adult female protagonist, Pressia is significantly different to many versions of

adolescent girlhood offered in similar novels written at around the same time. The Hunger

Games’ Katniss (2008-10) and Divergent’s protagonist Tris (2011-13) are notable examples of

dystopian female protagonists who defy gender expectations as self-reliant, willful rebels

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capable of violence and contesting the constraints authorities impose on their societies. Miranda

Green-Barteet and Jill Coste observe that although such novels feature female protagonists

who “challenge the gender and age limitations facing real girls” and “resist oppressive social

structures as they make their worlds more progressive,” these figures still uphold the status quo

in that such protagonists are “still white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cis-gendered girls” (82). As

a partially disabled Japanese-American posthuman female, Pressia is an atypical dystopian

protagonist in several respects. Pressia’s transition into a defiant girl-warrior is made more

complicated both by her rejection of unnecessary violence and by a deformity that at first makes

it quite difficult to hold and fire a gun. However, she certainly fits the model of what Sarah

Hentges has termed the ‘Girl on Fire,’ a female protagonist in young adult fiction who is

“complex, intelligent, brave, and a triumphant survivor of impossible situations” (5). Hentges

asserts that such a character is often “a real girl struggling to find and keep her friends or family

safe against impossible odds” (6), a characterisation that mirrors Pressia’s concern with

protecting those close to her from constant threats to their survival. Pressia also possesses a

desire “to discover the truth that has been kept from her, and from the populace . . . [and] . . .

cut the ties that bind and bring freedom to oppressed peoples” (Hentges 6), and fits the mould

as “an outcast, a rebel” (Hentges 6); however, Baggott utilises Pressia’s posthumanity to

complicate her role as a female protagonist and extend the limits of how the young adult genre

depicts girlhood.

The majority of the wretches, despite their contempt for Pures, do not resist the Dome

and believe in the propaganda disseminated by its authorities. A “Message” was delivered to

those outside the Dome on slips of paper, “a sky of singular, bodiless wings” (9), dropped from

planes to survivors one week after the Detonations: “We know you are here, our brothers and

sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace. For now, we watch from

afar, benevolently” (9). The inclusive diction of the message gives the false impression of

compassion, offering an example of the shrewd manipulation of language by authorities who

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peddle a lie of social unity and benevolence to placate the populace. Many, like Pressia, initially

accept this narrative and buy into the parlance of political leaders, as she believes “It may not

be word from the benevolent eye of God, as so many have thought of the Dome, but it’s

certainly not the Message of an evil force. Their sin is that of surviving. She can’t blame them for

that” (44). Learning to discern between truth and such propaganda is a key aspect of Pressia’s

development; as she begins to recognise the Dome’s master narrative as a coercive

mechanism of control, she becomes sceptical of authority and cognizant of the roles that

technology and language play in the political apparatus.

Many in Pressia’s community reject perceptions of purity, perceiving it as a loathsome

symbol of privilege. Young wretches sing nursery rhymes about murdering Pures:

Burn a Pure and breathe the ash.

Take his guts and make a sash.

Twist his hair and make a rope.

And use his bones to make Pure soap. (Baggott 27)

Even though Pressia has only fleeting memories of pre-Detonation life, she still possesses an

internalised perception of purity as a marker against which she measures her disfigured body, a

perspective on difference that is at odds with the sentiments sung by other young wretches.

Pressia recalls an instinctive longing for purity during her childhood, wishing she could have the

“Pure soap” from the nursery rhyme she used to sing: “She wished for that soap, stupidly . . . To

be Pure – what would that look and feel like? To erase the scars, to have a hand again, not a

doll?” (27). Pressia longs to understand the experience of purity that she believes would enable

her to avoid “feeling like lit flecks of swirling ash” (16), her experience of living as a wretch.

Pressia’s distinctive fusion tells a story of lost childhood innocence, as she was clutching

her precious doll during the Detonations. Early in the narrative she reflects on the moment she

became fused: “There was the tangle of lives and the doll’s head became her hand. And now, of

course, she knows the doll head because it’s part of her – its blinky eyes that click when she

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moves . . . its rubber head in place of her fist” (15). Through Pressia’s fusion with the doll head,

Baggott toys with conventional narrative associations of dolls and childhood feminine

innocence, establishing a potent metaphor for the transition from girl to woman. Analogous to

Cinder’s too-small cyborg foot, Pressia’s doll head is paradoxically a tether to her childhood self

and a constant reminder of her lost childhood. While Pressia exists in a community in which the

physical purity of the Pures is demonised, she nevertheless attempts to conceal the doll from

others. Her self-consciousness and shame in relation to her scars and doll head is heightened

in moments when she is required to expose her perceived deformities to the outside world: “She

pulls a woolen sock from her pocket and covers the doll’s head. She always covers it when she

goes out” (16); “She dips her head forward to cover the scars on the side of her face” (29).

Here, the novel evokes pity and sympathy for the posthuman heroine, illustrating how Pressia’s

deviance from an idealised norm of embodied ‘purity’ has influenced her self-revulsion—an

intensely human longing to meet an unattainable ideal.

Observing the self-deprecation and self-consciousness of posthuman protagonists

invites empathy for their struggles to tolerate their own embodied difference. Although the young

adult novels of Meyer, Pearson and Baggott present vastly different depictions of how

individuals respond when encountering the ‘deviant’ body, each narrative details the anxieties

experienced by a posthuman girl who predicts that her ‘different’ body will induce shock or

revulsion in onlookers: Cinder, for example, feels self-conscious when she anticipates that

Prince Kai will be repelled upon discovering her cyborg body. Pressia’s complex relationship

with her fused body is shown as Partridge clasps her wrist and exposes the doll head. His

reaction, “It surprises him, but he doesn’t let go. Instead he looks into her eyes” (136),

challenges Pressia’s presumption that the sight of her doll head would induce a negative

response in the Pure. Pressia’s interactions with Partridge are significant in reevaluating her

conceptions of purity. Following this encounter, the narrator reports a conversation between

Pressia and Bradwell: “‘We wear our marks with pride,’ Bradwell says. ‘We’re survivors.’”

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Pressia rejects this attitude as mere bravado: “Pressia knows that Bradwell wishes this were

true, but it’s not, not for her at least” (136). While Partridge’s reaction enables Pressia to begin

to readjust her assumptions, she is not yet able to embrace her fused body with pride. Rather

than accepting the doll head as part of her body, Pressia continues to reject it, a tension

graphically pronounced in her recollected attempt to sever it from her arm at thirteen. In this

violent act of self-loathing, Pressia attempted to eradicate her perceived abnormality. That

Pressia and Bradwell express such contrasting views towards the fused body signifies that

perceptions of embodied difference are disassociated from the “raw materials of bodily

variation” (Garland Thomson 6), and rather, are the product of disability or “deviance” being as

Garland Thomson terms, “a representation, a cultural interpretation or configuration, and a

comparison of bodies that structures social relations” (6). Baggott constructs wretch characters

who share disparate attitudes towards the symbolic power of the fused body in order to

challenge the norms of embodiment endorsed by pure authorities, pointing to the notion that

“the attribution of corporeal deviance” is the “product of cultural rules about what bodies should

be or do” (Garland Thomson 6). Pressia’s negative attitudes towards her physical form begin to

shift as she becomes capable of perceiving her own embodiment through an alternative lens to

the narrow cultural scripts that idealise ‘purity.’

It is not until Pressia sees herself as capable, resilient and even powerful despite her

physical ‘deviance’ that she begins to shape a new identity no longer undermined by her fusion.

Her status as a vulnerable wretch is overturned when she is captured and conscripted into the

OSR, a group of violent revolutionaries who forcibly recruit sixteen-year-olds to contest Dome

authorities. Near the beginning of the novel Pressia turns sixteen and she is targeted by the

OSR, which is initially presented as an oppressive threat, a group responsible for “Death

Sprees” (73), the indiscriminate killing of civilians designed to control the wretches through fear.

When Pressia enters into officer training she is introduced to her OSR superior, El Capitan, who

influences her evolution into a resilient, capable heroine able to leverage violence to contest

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Dome authorities. This shift begins when Pressia dons the OSR uniform and experiences an

unexpected sense of security, empowerment and pride: “This uniform makes her feel solid,

protected. She’s part of an army. She has backup. And she hates herself for this undeniable

feeling of unity” (161). Pressia relishes the power she holds as she wears OSR’s “black claw

emblem” (161) and recognises that along with her doll-head fist, the emblem makes her stand

out, but in a way that diminishes her deviance and affirms her authoritative status: “The kids

stare at it as much as they do her doll-head fist, as if the two cancel each other out” (161).

Bearing the OSR emblem shifts how Pressia feels about her embodied difference:

She hates that the uniform doesn’t let her hide her doll-head fist. The sleeves stop right

at her wrist. But she’s so powerful because of the black claw armband that she almost

doesn’t care. In fact, she has the inexplicable desire to whisper to them that if they, too,

had doll-head fists, they’d be lucky enough to get the claw band on their arms. It’s all a

twisted mix of pride and shame. (161)

Armed with symbols of power, the uniform and her gun, as an OSR officer Pressia begins her

active resistance against Dome authorities. The fact that Pressia’s deformity actually aids her in

being able to adequately grip her gun, as she has had to develop a strong grip over the years in

her remaining hand (164), portrays her as able to translate her weaknesses into strengths.

Channeling her resentment and building distrust of authorities into her mission of resistance—

like Roth’s Tris and even Cinder in the final stages of Meyer’s narrative—Pressia evolves into a

‘Girl on Fire’ heroine as she becomes a courageous protagonist willing to exercise violence for

the greater good.

The capacity to forge meaningful relationships also becomes a clear determinant of an

individual’s humanness in Pure. Pressia’s journey towards self-acceptance is aided by her

deepening relationships with others who reinforce the message that she does not need to

continue to conceal her fusion and scars. Baggott’s wretches acknowledge that physical

markings can tell a deeper story of past suffering, symbolising personal growth through

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hardship. In particular, Bradwell resists the idea of fusions as repulsive, and instead sees them

as signs of beauty and strength. As a humanised human/animal hybrid, Bradwell has a flock of

small birds permanently fused into his back. Bradwell is presented as a posthuman figure who

perceives himself not as either victim or deviant but as an empowered rebel and survivor.

Bradwell’s positive revision of disfigurement prompts Pressia to further reconsider her

assumptions regarding how others will respond to her body. When Bradwell touches Pressia’s

scar and studies the details of her facial features with adoration, he aids her in recognising her

own beauty: “He looks at her as if his eyes are taking in her entire face, her eyes, her cheeks,

her lips. Normally she’d look away, but she can’t. ‘The scar is beautiful,’ he says. Her heart

skitters. She pulls the doll head to her chest” (259). This is a powerful scene in which Pressia

reexamines her assumption that her markings are repulsive to others. Pressia’s reply,

“‘Beautiful? It’s a scar,’” is met by Bradwell’s reassurance, “‘It’s a sign of survival’” (259). This

marks a turning point in the narrative, as Pressia too comes to view herself less as a vulnerable

victim and increasingly as an empowered survivor. In this way, Pure utilises relationships

between fused posthumans to depict physical deviance in a positive light, as signs of

persistence and courage in the face of extreme adversity—integral aspects of being human.

Whether an individual’s physical aberrations mark them as less than human or more human

becomes a matter of perspective, open to renegotiation, rather than a fixed cultural directive.

Partridge also assists Pressia in embracing her fusion as part of her identity. Partridge is

a young Pure who has escaped the Dome in search of his mother, Aribelle, who he suspects is

still alive outside the Dome. Assisting Partridge to find his mother while protecting him from the

hostility of other wretches who detest the Pures becomes a major task for Pressia. Partridge,

though a Pure, initially unaccustomed to the wretches’ physical aberrations, reflects that the doll

head is more than a detached object that mars the integrity of Pressia’s body: “It is part of her. It

isn’t with her, but of her. He can feel the humanness of it – the warmth, the play beneath the

skin of a real hand, alive” (298). Here, Baggott introduces readers to positive ways of

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approaching physical signs of embodied difference—in this fusion of human and nonhuman,

humanness prevails. The novel endorses acceptance of aspects of the body that have been

Othered, portraying imperfections as symbols of beauty and life experience, and, through the

multivocal narration, readers perceive how differing views of Pressia’s disfigured, hybrid body

aid her in embracing her fusion. Through such interactions between Partridge and Pressia, a

Pure and a wretch, the narrative suggests the need to look beyond surface embodiment, and

search more deeply for signs of humanness. Indeed, in Baggott’s vision even severe physical

differences are not enough to compromise one’s human status. If beings possess recognisably

human traits—physical and behavioural—that persist alongside radical abnormalities, then

these beings are presented as worthy of empathy.

A key revelation in Pure occurs when Pressia and Partridge discover that they are

brother and sister—that they share the same mother, Aribelle Willux, and that she is now a

wretch suffering extreme forms of fusion and disfigurement. The pair find Aribelle enclosed

within a metal and glass capsule designed to protect survivors from radioactive contamination.

Aribelle’s body is described as “ravaged” (301), an adjective suggestive of rape: her body has

been almost decimated by the Detonations. She is physically incapacitated and many of the

organic parts of her body have been replaced by metallic and wooden appendages. Barely able

to function, she is described as more artificial than human:

Her neck leads to collarbones, one of which is a steel rod that turns into a metal gear at

the shoulder. Her arm is made of stainless steel. The metal is perforated as if from a

colander, perhaps to keep it lighter in weight. In lieu of fingers, the arm narrows to a ball-

bearing hinge where the wrist should be and ends in a pincer – two metal prongs. (301)

Disparate objects and materials construct a version of the female body that represents one

extreme of humanity’s malleability—an apparent monstrosity.

Observing the extent of her own mother’s disfigurements enables Pressia’s reevaluation

of her response to such physical differences in both herself and others: “It’s hard to explain but

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her [Aribelle’s] limbs seem beautiful to Pressia. Maybe it’s Bradwell’s view that there’s beauty in

their scars and fusings because they are signs of their survival, which is a beautiful thing, if you

think about it” (301). Pressia’s ability to perceive beauty in Aribelle’s body reflects her own

reconciliation of the crises of embodied identity with which she has been confronted. As Pressia

appreciates the “delicacy, care, love that’s been poured into” (302) the reconstruction of

Aribelle’s body, she overlooks her body’s differences to read the story of a simultaneously tragic

and beautiful past. Pressia’s posthuman coming-of-age journey entails accepting radical forms

of fusion and fragmentation and developing greater tolerance and compassion for the self and

Others. Through this narrative, Baggott explores the possibility that internal qualities of the

human spirit are more important in determining humanness than surface traits of physical

embodiment.

Fused hybrids in a post-apocalyptic landscape

Pure presents a graphic portrait of a ruined civilisation—a ravaged disaster zone made toxic to

its inhabitants—in the carnage wrought by technological destruction. In this way, Baggott

provides a fictional site both for imagining the posthuman and exploring the legacy of the 1945

Hiroshima bombings. James Berger asserts that we are currently living in a post-apocalyptic

world, referencing the atrocities of the Holocaust and Hiroshima to assert that we have already

witnessed apocalyptic events and live in their aftermath: “the most dystopic vision of science

fiction can do no more than replicate the actual historical catastrophes of the twentieth century”

(xiii). Baggott’s Acknowledgements reveal her fascination with the horrific outcomes of the

Hiroshima bombings that influenced Pure’s post-apocalyptic vision:

The research for this novel led me to accounts of the effects of the atomic bombs

dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the editing process, I found the nonfiction

book Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino, which is not currently being sold

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by its publisher. It was a crucial read for me because of its depictions of those lost and

those who survived. I hope a revised edition finds its way back onto shelves. And I hope,

in general, that Pure directs people to nonfiction accounts of the atomic bomb – horrors

we cannot afford to forget. (347)

Pure incorporates Baggott’s research into how Japanese people responded to disfigured

survivors who came to serve as physical reminders of the irrevocable ruptures that had been

inflicted on their humanity and culture. Baggott builds on images of the physical damage

inflicted by Hiroshima in her graphic portrayals of fused bodies and the devastated landscape.

The novel’s portrayal of the need to develop posthuman ethics in relation to how war

technologies are utilised is thus a response to real historical events.

Through Bradwell’s account, Baggott portrays how survivors of World War II in Japan

were socially excluded as a ramification of deviance from cultural norms:

My dad won a grant to study rituals in a remote Japanese fishing village and a family

gave him a video recording of a woman who had survived Hiroshima, but had become

deformed. Her arm was seared to a pocket watch. She was hidden because there had

been others like her, people who’d fused in strange ways to animals, to land, to each

other, and they were taken away by the government and never seen again. (181)

Bradwell then informs Partridge about cultural attitudes that shaped the politics of embodiment

in post-war Japan: “The Japanese were very homogeneous, an island culture. And this may

have been too much for the emperor — not that they would be destroyed, but deformed,

mutated” (181). That deformity and mutation would present greater threats to Baggott’s fictional

Japan than mass destruction suggests that upholding normative human embodiment held more

cultural currency than the welfare of individual citizens. This backstory provides a parallel

between the aims of the Japanese emperor and Baggott’s Ellery Willux, architect of the

Detonations, who both prioritise uniformity and ‘pure’ homogenous embodiment.

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Baggott’s appropriation of the iconography of post-nuclear devastation speaks to

collective post-World War II anxieties about humanity’s ability to abuse technology for

destructive purposes. Discussing the post-apocalyptic literary imagination that influenced

science fiction in the wake of Hiroshima, Jeffrey Womack explains that the genre saw authors

appropriating “a set of powerful images from the nuclear age, including the vision of denuded

wastelands… wiped clean and burned by a nuclear blast, [that] communicated to audiences a

sense of foreboding and death appropriate for a post-apocalyptic world” (82). Notable examples

include Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novel The World Jones Made and Andre Norton’s 1952 novel

Daybreak, 2250 A.D., both of which depict ruined post-nuclear landscapes populated by

mutated, deformed life. Susan Sontag’s 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster” described the

era’s science fiction as a genre characterised by “an aesthetic of destruction” (44) that can

permit heightened understanding of “psychologically unbearable” (42) catastrophes. While the

pervasive paranoia of the Cold War era may not resonate with twenty-first century readers, what

continues to make science fiction featuring post-nuclear settings so powerful is that it translates

contemporary fears about humanity’s propensity for destruction into engaging narratives.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto discusses a “paradox of nuclear violence” that affects human lives

and the environment in ways that are “simultaneously hypervisible and invisible,” a contradiction

that requires complex modes of representation when articulated in textual forms (169). Pure’s

ravaged post-apocalyptic landscape is characterised by both hypervisible and inconspicuous

signs of technological interference. For instance, the radioactive toxicity that mutates and infects

the landscape and people in unpredictable ways is presented as a pervasive yet imperceptible

threat. In Pure, the motif of ash presents a symbol of destruction written on the landscape.

Pressia has grown accustomed to the inescapable ash: “She doesn’t even notice it anymore.

She’s gotten used to it swirling in the air day in and day out, settling like thin lace over

everything that sits still long enough” (103). To Partridge, a Pure accustomed to the Dome’s

sterile, processed air, the “gray stuff” that resembles snow is a foreign presence (103). Pressia

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explains the various expressions the wretches use to describe the ash, a perpetual reminder of

the darkness and death that followed the Detonations, “black snow, the earth’s silk lining – like a

purse turned inside out. Some call it the dark death” (103). Baggott also depicts the spectacle of

disaster in highly visual terms through various posthuman terrains that are characterised by

different gradations of degradation as a result of the Detonations. Each terrain reveals unique

threats depending on the form of manipulation or destruction to which it has been subjected,

asking us to pay attention to the landscape to identify different forms of menace wrought by its

toxic and unpredictable posthuman nature.

Pure’s landscape contains remnants of the former order of modernity that are barely

distinguishable in the post-apocalyptic wreckage. In the Meltlands, visual signals of humanity’s

past are inscribed onto the decimated landscape: “That’s why they’re called the Meltlands —

each yard dotted with a large, colorful melted knot of plastic that was once a sliding board,

swing set, and lidded sandbox in the shape of a turtle” (86). This landscape offers scant

signposts for characters to mentally reassemble structures that once provided orientation in the

pre-Detonation world—to understand what before may have looked like. Readers encounter

nostalgic images of suburban life familiar in their contemporary milieu, yet reduced to rubble:

“There’s a field where a house used to sit. Now it’s a broken mound” (168). Artificial structures

remain amidst the desolated natural landscape: “The plastic jungle gyms and pirate ships and

mini castles turned out to be durable. Large indistinct blobs of colour, they dot the blackened,

nearly flattened terrain of dust and ash like warped sculptures” (178). The only remaining bursts

of colour and vitality are made of plastic—artificial, man-made remnants that have proven

durable while nature chokes under toxic ash, exemplifying the devastating inferiority of nature in

the nature/culture equation. Psychological and ontological crises result as the human desire for

the order of the past is confronted with a chaotic external reality. As Pressia views the Meltlands

as a first-generation Detonation survivor, she struggles to label and categorise the world around

her: “Pressia couldn’t define a thing” (168). In Pure the wretches can no longer read the post-

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apocalyptic landscape through previously relevant constructs and must adapt instead to a state

of constant disorder in both the bodies and environments they inhabit.

With deviation from pre-existing images of the human body such a prevalent

phenomenon in Pure’s post-apocalyptic world, new forms of Othering take place among the

survivors. Baggott illustrates various forms of Othering at play by portraying certain wretches,

who, although perceived as abject and inferior subhumans by Pures, register as distinctly

human in both their own eyes and those of the reader. These wretches are humanised by their

intrinsic qualities of empathy, reason and complex subjectivities that assist them in negotiating a

chaotic, hostile world. At the other end of the spectrum, the narrative complicates the question

of ‘what is human’ by its portrayal of posthuman bodies that deviate so radically from ‘normal’

conceptions of the human that their humanity is no longer apparent. The Beasts and Dusts are

labelled by the wretches according to the Othered phenomena to which they have been

reduced—Beast/animal and Dust/earth—and are deemed subhuman and monstrous by other

wretches as a result. These hybrid figures are considered “outcasts” (100) by the protagonists,

“creatures so fused or burned or scarred that no one can identify them anymore. They’ve lost

something elementally human” (100). The Beasts, Dusts and other undefinable creatures that

lack the capacity for human reasoning and communication are animalistic, functioning on

instincts rather than reason to meet their basic survival needs and perceived as “vicious” (100)

as a result of their predatory behaviour.

The Groupies present a form of posthuman body that destabilises normative perceptions

of the human body as singular, whole and discrete from the bodies of others. Shildrick explains

that “physical and mental autonomy” are valued as normative traits of western subjectivity,

privileging “interpersonal separation and distinction,” and meaning that “any compromise of

control over one’s own body, any indication of interdependency and connectivity, or of corporeal

instability, are the occasion — for the normative majority — of a deep-seated anxiety that

devalues difference” (Shildrick, Dangerous Discourses 2). In this regard, the characters El

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Capitan and his brother Helmud, permanently perched upon El Capitan’s back, represent a

more troubling form of fusion than Pressia’s doll head prosthesis. Baggott describes the

physical features of the fused brothers: “the visual effect is that of a permanent piggyback ride.

Helmud has his own upper body, but the rest feeds into his brother – the lumpy bone and

muscle of his thighs forming a thick band across El Capitan’s lower back” (118), creating an

image of a fused hunchback. Baggott conveys El Capitan’s frustration at bearing the

responsibility for their survival and his frustration at having Helmud involved in every interaction.

While El Capitan is depicted as a functioning individual with his own subjectivity, Helmud merely

mimics his brother’s words, seeming incapable of original thought: “‘Dead again,’ El Capitan

says. And then El Capitan’s brother, Helmud, mutters, ‘Dead again’” (118). El Capitan

characterises Helmud as a dehumanised subject lacking his own voice and agency, revealing a

process of Othering taking place within a single fused body. Pressia senses El Capitan’s

struggle to adjust to fusion with Helmud, noticing that he refers to himself using singular

pronouns, prompting her to question, “Shouldn’t El Capitan refer to himself as plural?” (165). As

a result of their fused embodiment, El Capitan is forced to deal with an inescapable situation

that makes him feel hatred towards Helmud: “He hates the way people can’t help but look at

Helmud while El Capitan is speaking, a stupid puppet bobbing behind his back, and a rage will

rise up inside El Capitan – so quick and sharp he could snap” (119). The intensity of El

Capitan’s resentment for this situation reveals a deep-seated longing for self-differentiation.

Just as Pressia struggles to accept the doll’s head as a part of her body, El Capitan

struggles to move beyond the perception of himself as separate and distinct from his brother. El

Capitan’s desires to be rid of his fusion to his brother are fuelled by visions of violence, to the

extent that he would wish Helmud dead in order to be extricated from him. However, with their

biologies synced, the brothers are dependent for their survival on each other: “If Helmud died,

he would too, though. He knows that” (119). Therefore, despite El Capitan’s recurring visions of

rolling onto his back and smothering his brother to death, he understands the need to accept his

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new form of ‘grotesque’ embodiment: “They are both too large to have one die and the other

live, too entwined” (119). This challenge of renegotiating the boundaries between self and Other

reflects a key complexity of life in Baggott’s posthuman world. The reader witnesses both El

Capitan’s rejection of his dual embodiment and his recognition that his hybrid form has aided his

survival as much as it has exacerbated his suffering. Accepting the Other as intrinsic to the self

is presented as crucial to El Capitan reconstructing an identity that accommodates this form of

posthuman embodiment.

On the spectrum of human to subhuman that operates outside the Dome, the more

confronting forms of Groupies are made up of groups of people fused together in horrific ways

that mean they must forego individual autonomy to function as a collective whole. Graphic

portrayals of individual bodies fused together in haphazard ways depict these Groupies as far

more dehumanised than El Capitan and Helmud. Through these figures, Pure builds a

multifaceted portrait of posthumanity that contrasts strikingly with the clinical and controlled

approach to constructing the cyborg body depicted in the novels of Meyer, Pearson and

Winterson. Baggott constructs images of multiple individuals fused into one body in

amalgamations that make it impossible to determine how many people make up the new form:

“What used to be maybe seven or eight people is now one massive body, an assortment of

arms and legs and a few glints of chrome, their leering faces – burned, wired, sometimes

melded, two faces in one” (88). Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s seminal work on the “abject” body

that disrupts the Symbolic Order in its paradoxical repulsiveness and attractiveness, Eleonora

Lima describes the effect of bodies that “repel us because they disturb identity, system, and

order, and thus do not respect borders, position and rules” (174). Abject bodies evoke revulsion

because they defy containment: they are the leaking, bleeding and open bodies susceptible to

contamination, featuring warpings, protrusions, parts that are deformed and out of place. Abject

bodies are therefore threatening to order because they do not conform to conventional

definitions of what is human—they reshape them. From this view, the grotesque bodies of the

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Groupies presented in Pure can be seen as abject figures, provoking fascination, terror and awe

and therefore reshaping conceptions of the nature of the ‘human’ body.

The scene in which Partridge is introduced to the ‘Mothers,’ a community of wretch

women living outside the Dome, presents a version of posthuman embodiment that humanises

abject monstrosity. Fused to their children during the Detonations while attempting to save

them, the Mothers evoke pity and sympathy as figures representing maternal protection.

Through Partridge’s perspective, the Mothers’ bodies are observed as “part robotic,” with “gears

and wires, pieces of skin melded with glass and plastic” (172). The faces of the women are

variegated with debris, remnants of glass, tiles, shattered mirrors, metal and plastic fixed into

their skin. Many have their movement inhibited by their fusions to their own children, “those with

children in their legs lurch and sway, gaits of exerted effort and drive” (211). The identities of

these women are fixed rather than fluid: perpetually conjoined to their offspring, the mothers are

also fixed to their maternal role. Baggott’s construction of the Mothers subverts the positive

aspects of Carl Jung’s “Great Mother” archetype as abject symbols of life and fertility (Jung 15).

Images of the children fused to their bodies induce horror in onlookers while underscoring their

maternal nurturing of life. The Mothers also mirror darker aspects of Jung’s archetype,

connoting terror and death (Jung 15), as they violently oppose patriarchal dictates through a

creed that condemns men for their historical role as destroyers and oppressors, labelling all

men “Deaths” (233). The leader of the group, Our Good Mother, is depicted as disfigured by the

pearl necklace she was wearing during the explosions, her skin having grown over the pearls to

create a series of protrusions that make her appear diseased: “Her pale skin has almost

completely grown over the pearls around her neck. They look like a strand of perfectly shaped

tumors” (232). The translation of feminine symbols of beauty into images of disease provides a

new, unsettling manifestation of the maternal archetype that is anything but “post-gender.” In

this sense, humanist values persist in Pure’s post-apocalyptic world—not merely to affirm

positive human qualities that central characters seek to retain—but also as the Mothers’

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ravaged bodies remind readers of the conflict produced by patriarchal hierarchies of gendered

identity.

The spectrum of posthuman embodiment in Pure includes various animal/human hybrids

that populate the post-apocalyptic landscape. Pure constructs sympathetic portrayals of some

animal/human hybrids who are perceived as having retained their human status even though

their fusions with animals make them appear distinctively deformed. Pressia’s friend Bradwell is

one of these figures. Neither he nor the other wretches classify Bradwell as a Beast, and the

narration does not dehumanise him despite his animal/human fusion. His body is fully functional

and his mind is perceived as completely ‘human’ in his capacity for intellectual reasoning. The

narrator reveals his painful moment of fusion: “He doesn’t remember much – only the bright

flash, the heat coursing through his body, like his blood was on fire. The shadow of the birds

rising up behind him” (45). Pressia feels empathy for Bradwell, “the birds are his body now – just

as the doll head is part of hers” (110), as she realises that he too has been forced to

accommodate a fusion that complicates his life and identity. Baggott presents the two life forms,

human and animal, as entirely dependent on each other as one posthuman being: “The birds

merge with his life span. They live as long as he lives. If one has an injured wing, would he feel

it?” (110). Yet the narrative continually affirms that Bradwell’s ‘human’ subjectivity is fully intact

and has not in any way been diminished by his fusion with the birds embedded in his back.

From the perspectives of focalising characters, this means that his humanity has been retained,

and he represents a form of posthuman hybrid fit to actively contest the Dome’s injustices and

the wretches’ status as a subhuman underclass.

In contrast, readers are invited to also recognise that certain hybrid life forms are

deficient as they lack ostensibly human physical or behavioural traits. Pressia and El Capitan,

for instance, view the fused animal/human hybrids—the Beasts—as subhumans. Hybrid

animal/human creatures have long been utilised in Gothic and science fiction, particularly since

the nineteenth century, to explore vexed animal/human kinships and the limits that define what

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is human (Morrison 15). As discussed in my Introduction, posthuman theorists have identified

the symbolic potential of hybrid figures to challenge Western ideologies that position animals as

inferior to humans. Analysing the blurring of human/animal boundaries in young adult science

fiction, Cat Yampell comments: “In contemporary Western culture, animals are so labeled to

perpetuate anthropocentrism. By calling all that is not human-animal “other,” human-animals

define other animals through the language of deficiency. They are not human-animal; thus, they

are inferior and subject to the whims—and experiments—of the dominant species” (207). In

Pure, one “wolfish Beast” exhibits traits that in Pressia’s eyes render it “more animal than

human” (33). While it has a distinctly human face and eyes, the Beast is animalistic in its

behaviour, it “has no speech, no hands” and barks, claws, “crouches and growls” (34). The

novel’s classification of the Beasts as subhuman actually reinforces anthropocentric

understandings of the human, erecting a new form of boundary that distinguishes between the

different forms of posthuman hybrids existing outside the Dome.

In this posthuman terrain, the best and fittest survive and multiply by whatever means

available in an erratic, arbitrary process. Hybrid creatures are mutating as they breed, a

testament to Darwinian evolution as they evolve physical characteristics that strengthen their

survival capabilities. Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ principle is still at work in this posthuman

world, but with dangerous implications. Pressia and El Capitan encounter a creature that

symbolises a “post-species” form of embodiment, as it appears to possess both fox and pig

traits with “writhing reddish fur” and “a dainty piggish snout with wiry whiskers but a fox-like

body” (166). El Capitan describes the creature as: “Hybrid of some sort. It’s genetically mutated,

upscale though” and comments “Survival of the fittest” as he nudges the animal’s metallic

looking claws (166). Scott Jeffery highlights the fact that evolutionary theory has been a crucial

influence on the development of posthuman theory, providing evidence of humanity’s kinship

with animals, ultimately “unseating the notion of the human being as unique” (71). El Capitan

labels the new forms of posthuman life “perversions” (166), a noun denoting aberration and

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corruption of what is natural on a moral and ethical level. As deviant creations, born of what El

Capitan perceives as a “sick” (167) vision, the cross-species mutants symbolise the extent to

which both human and animal species have been diverted from the trajectory of organic

evolutionary processes—an indictment of a biopolitics devoid of ethics.

This pattern of Othering posthuman life forms that do not exhibit certain ‘human’ traits is

also apparent in attitudes towards the human/nature hybrids, the Dusts. The perspectives of the

focal characters Pressia, El Capitan and Partridge encourage readers to perceive the Dusts as

subhuman due to their predatory and threatening behaviours. The narrator describes these

creatures as “those who fused with the earth; in the city, they fused with the blasted buildings.

Most of them died shortly after the Detonations — no means of sustenance, or no mouths, or

mouths with no digestion. But some survived because they became more rock than human, and

others proved they could be of use” (30). Baggott’s Dusts can be read as creatures of the

posthuman imaginary that speak to our apprehension about technologies that corrupt and

denature our organic and built environments. The post-Detonation earth itself is regenerating in

unpredictable ways: with the combination of the nanotechnologies released during the

Detonations and the toxic radiation, new posthuman life forms that defy definition proliferate.

Baggott depicts these posthuman creatures as uncanny and disturbing threats to those still

functionally human, monstrous beings that evoke visceral horror with “partially exposed

skeletons... Some are locked together, rib-cage-to-rib-cage, jawbone-to-jawbone. Some have

fused skulls. Others are stacked on top of one another. And all of them are tied to the earth”

(276). The environment itself has become a ghastly testament to the monsters unexpectedly

birthed by the Detonations. Viewed by Pures and wretches alike as threatening predators, the

Dusts are located at the monstrously inhuman end of the spectrum of hybrid lifeforms in Pure,

posthuman creatures that represent the loss of human physical, emotional and behavioural

traits as a degrading consequence of technological abuse.

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Baggott’s fictional posthuman apocalypse gives birth to hybrid life forms that challenge

notions of ‘pure’ embodiment endorsed by leaders seemingly fixated on the preservation of

homogeneity, rupturing discrete boundaries of the ‘normal human’ body. However, the spectrum

of posthuman hybridity simultaneously illustrates that categories and labels abound in Pure’s

post-apocalyptic world. Among the wretch population outside the Dome—even as the

categories of human and Other are being contested—boundaries are still operating to

distinguish between human and subhuman. For a posthuman hybrid to be deemed human in

the world of the novel, their interiority is far more important than their embodiment. The capacity

to construct a subjective identity, connect with others and cultivate particular qualities is crucial

to being regarded as human. Ultimately, the category of the human has not been completely

dismantled by posthumanity within the novel—it is being redefined according to new criteria

more suitable to negotiating the disordered, unpredictable world regenerating in the wake of the

apocalypse.

The mad scientist’s vision and the ‘enhanced’ Pure body

Classic characters such as Milton’s Satan, H.G. Wells’ Dr Moreau, and Mary Shelley’s Victor

Frankenstein, as well as the cautionary myth of Icarus flying too close to the sun, reflect the

inherent dangers of humanity audaciously breaching human limits. Ellery Willux is a version of

the ‘mad scientist becomes creator’ archetype of antagonists who seize technology as a tool to

test and reinvent the limits of the human. Baggott constructs Willux as a would-be god who

abuses his scientific authority to bring about cataclysm in the name of rebirth. In the Genesis

narrative, God created the world from nothingness; in Pure, Willux decides he must destroy the

existing world before he can commence his creation process. For him, apocalypse is necessary

to construct a new—and, in his mind, enhanced—world, one that is both empowered and

manipulated by scientific knowledge. Willux deliberately engineered genocide to create an

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ending to the known world and mark a new beginning, a new Genesis, or as he calls it, a New

Eden. In doing so, he exemplifies blatant disregard and contempt for human boundaries.

As a ‘mad scientist’ figure, Willux intentionally seizes innovations in architectural,

biological, nano and military technologies to transform humanity both inside and outside the

Dome in ways that dramatically reshape definitions of who and what counts as human.

Significantly, Willux’s former wife, Aribelle Willux reveals that he purposely selected members of

the population to survive the Detonations who possessed the appearance, race, gender and

socio-behavioural traits to reproduce his vision of a superior humanity. “Operation Phoenix” is

the name of his mission to create a “new civilization [that] would rise from the ashes like a

phoenix” (156), populated by “humans worthy of paradise” (309). It becomes clear that while the

fused bodies of the wretches challenge pre-Detonation categories of the human, the

transformations took place under Willux’s intentionally narrow classifications for qualifying who

should be regarded as human. He purposefully utilises the category of the human as political

propaganda to reinforce his belief that only ‘pure’ bodies meet the ‘human’ ideal, thereby

classifying the fused wretches as subhumans worthy of exclusion. According to Polish-born

sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, following the Enlightenment “the modern world was distinguished

by its activist, engineering attitude toward nature and toward itself” (70). Bauman argues that

this scientific ideology led to heinous practices of racial cleansing under the Nazi regime:

“Science was not to be conducted for its own sake; it was seen as, first and foremost, an

instrument of awesome power allowing its holder to improve on reality, to reshape it according

to human plans and designs, and to assist it in its drive to self-perfection” (70). Bauman’s

observations on Holocaust engineers can be seen in the attitudes of Pure’s scientific authorities,

particularly through Willux’s re-engineering of humanity in the search for perfection—or purity—

as the apex of human evolution.

The domed city is a long-standing science-fiction trope that enables authors to explore

social tensions of inclusion and exclusion, freedom and control. In an early example, Arthur C.

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Clarke’s 1956 novel The City and the Stars, Diaspar, a domed city on a depleted future Earth

designed by scientists as a modern manifestation of Eden, keeps inhabitants in a state of fear

and ignorance about the external world, as the narrator explains: “To everyone in Diaspar,

“outside” was a nightmare that they could not face. They would never talk about it if it could be

avoided; it was something unclean and evil” (6). More recently, Scott Nicholson’s 2016 young

adult novel Crucible portrays a protective dome constructed by a mutant colony, the ‘Zaps,’ to

protect them from toxic landscapes decimated by nuclear cataclysm. As in Pure, the Dome’s

architectural technologies protect the socially elite from the devastated environment beyond its

boundary—or at least appear to do so. In Pure, the Dome’s walls literalise the ideological

barriers that conventionally regulate hierarchical order in any given society. However, Baggott is

not merely employing a much-used image to construct a divided posthuman world in which only

some people are worthy of protection.

As the Dome’s architect, Willux admits to Partridge that he sees his creation as “a way to

live forever, to build something that lasts. A legacy” (23). Willux’s Dome functions on many

levels as a mechanism for both imprisonment and exclusion, and as what science-fiction

theorist Carl Abbott has defined as a “Techno City” functioning as “a container for new

technologies (14). These enclosed spaces, which are “all walls and no gates,” provide

opportunities for authorities to engage in “exercises in social engineering layered on top of

physical engineering” (Abbott 95; 94). Baggott’s Dome resembles Abbott’s account of a

“carceral city that imprisons its inhabitants” (Abbott 15). In contrast to the landscape outside, the

world inside the Dome is depicted as sterile and restrictive, a microcosm of the future society

that Willux is working to engineer. In Pure, posthuman technologies and social control go hand

in hand; the architectural technology of the Dome permits extreme surveillance with authorities

submitting the bodies and minds of those trapped therein to vigilant scrutiny and manipulation.

Baggott represents complex measures of social manipulation that aid authorities in distorting the

bodies and minds of the population. Pure presents forms of engineering that take place on

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biological, terrestrial and social levels, and depicts the potential success of Willux’s New Eden

project as contingent upon his capacity to reconstruct not only the biological human body, but

also human culture, politics and history. The creation of a new paradigm of ‘normality’ for Dome

citizens is made possible as authorities insist on the benevolence of their plans for regenerating

society and perpetuate the belief that a radical project of technological enhancement is for the

benefit of humankind. ‘Good’ citizens are those who do not question this project, credulously

giving their bodies up to the state’s vision. Inside the Dome, goodness is more associated with

compliance than with the qualities of empathy and resilience that are esteemed by wretches on

the outside.

In Pure, the Dome inhabitants unknowingly suffer from the latent paradox that while

authorities promise protection, their autonomy is constantly under threat as invasive social

conditioning, indoctrination by false historical narratives, and pervasive surveillance intensify

their physical and behavioural containment. The dissemination of the lie that authorities are

merely a benign presence is revealed in Partridge’s school history lessons in which his teacher,

Glassings, adheres to a strict curriculum of carefully constructed falsehoods: “The Dome

watches over the wretches and one day, when the earth has rejuvenated itself, they will return

to take care of the wretches and start anew” (18). Partridge, however, is aware that as Dome

residents they are being fed limited and distorted information about their past and present

circumstances, and he questions the version dictated by authorities. There are moments during

Glassings’ lessons when Partridge senses a dissenting tone in his teachings as they veer

towards mildly cynical commentary on Dome politics. For instance, Partridge gleans from his

history lessons a key teaching as “Glassings hints that history is malleable. It can be altered.

Why? To tell a nicer story” (24), implying to readers that, as with the bodies and minds of its

citizens, Dome leaders perceive history as pliable to their vision. When Glassings diverges from

his lecture notes and uses the oxymoron “beautiful barbarism” (20) to describe events

concerning an ancient culture, Partridge’s suspicions concerning the repression of free

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expression of individual thought are made clear in his reflection, “He isn’t supposed to make

asides – beautiful barbarism, that kind of thing could be misinterpreted” (20). Partridge and

readers alike infer the relevance of this alliterative phrase to the present-day reality of the novel.

That Partridge is aware of the censoring effects of fear is indicative of his ability to recognise

complex layers of control in his society, foreshadowing his emerging resistance to authority.

Misleading narratives have also conditioned Dome inhabitants to believe that the

wretches are degraded and depraved subhumans, feeding into the complex mechanisms of

Othering that locate the wretches as physically, behaviourally and morally deviant. Before

Partridge embarks on his quest to escape the Dome in search for his mother, he is fearful of the

land outside that he has been told is “filled with wretches, most of whom were too stupid or

stubborn to join the Dome. Or they were sick in the head, criminally insane, virally compromised

– already institutionalized” (54). The Pure population inside the Dome is taught to fear and pity

the wretches as an underclass of subhuman figures, a pattern of Othering that is grounded in

real-world renderings of racialised Others as savage subhumans according to colonial

discourses (Glaser 212). Both Partridge and Lyda, a young female Dome inhabitant, initially

perceive the wretches as violent threats to their survival. Lyda sees venturing out of the Dome

as “a death sentence,” worrying that the wretches “will rise up, rape her, and kill her” (265).

While it is true that the world outside the Dome poses many different threats to survival and that

most wretches loathe the Pures, readers are aware that many wretches, like Pressia, possess

human qualities of compassion and reason. Partridge recalls that his father referred to the

survivors outside the Dome as “our lesser brothers and sisters” (24), language that explicitly

articulates Willux’s belief in their collective inferiority. Baggott clearly conveys the power of such

narratives in marginalising the wretch population as Dome authorities consciously select

language that conjures fear and loathing of the Other.

Inside the Dome, social and technological manipulation coalesce to amplify the control

authorities hold over their captive population. Central to Willux’s vision is his deployment of

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‘coding’ technologies to revolutionise humanity by creating an elite breed of enhanced

posthumans—human specimens genetically engineered to be physically, mentally and

behaviourally ‘ideal.’ Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg draw on Michel Foucault’s idea of the

‘docile body’ that is “subjected, used, transformed and improved” (136) to meet the needs and

ideals of fascist authorities like Germany’s Holocaust engineers, observing that “while the power

of the state metastasizes, human beings are re-composed as docile bodies” (217) to be

modified at will. Similarly, Willux’s project of social engineering involves the strict control of

human behavioural psychology and the biological body through science. As readers gradually

discover, the behaviour of Dome individuals is monitored, regulated and altered through

biotechnological manipulation. The bodies of Pures are objectified as property of the state, sites

onto which authorities can inscribe future New Eden ideals, and that can be readily modified to

better serve the state’s needs. Technology renders the body malleable, a blank canvas for the

reproduction of new cultural and social codes.

Adolescent boys and girls in the Dome are reduced to property of authorities and are

coerced into complying with the social obligations associated with their gender. Through Lyda’s

perspective, Baggott exposes the impact of technology on the politics of female embodiment

and sexuality within the Dome. Willux has constructed a system that preemptively quashes

dissent. Uniformity is the central aim, exemplified through Lyda’s reflection upon the activities of

the girls’ academy: they must complete a full hour of calisthenics every morning “in matching

one-piece jumpers – shorts and striped short-sleeved tops that zip up the front” (279). Like

Partridge’s, Lyda’s resistance against Dome regulations evolves through her internal

questioning of her imposed social role. Denied the “opportunity” of brain coding due to the threat

this process poses to their reproductive organs, most academy girls are reserved for

repopulating the earth and ensuring that the new population meets the Pure genetic and

aesthetic ideal of physical perfection: “Girls don’t get coding, something about their delicate

reproductive organs, unless they’re not okayed for reproduction. If they aren’t going to

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reproduce, then brain enhancements can start up” (53). Lyda is aware that the reproductive

organs of academy girls are perceived by authorities as “more important than enhancing their

minds or bodies” (262). Here, the narrative portrays posthuman technologies utilised to

perpetuate severe gender inequalities: while males will become more physically and

intellectually enhanced, females will be consigned to their roles as child bearers and raisers;

their reproductive potential makes them valuable commodities of the state. Such posthuman

technologies in Pure amplify the reach of intrusive political controls in highly gendered ways that

reduce women to vessels of social engineering, void of agency over their own bodies.

Posthumanity has given Dome authorities new technological tools for reinforcing pre-Detonation

patriarchal ideals that Willux aims to sustain in his New Eden society.

Even though Pures lack the fusings that mark the wretches as posthuman, a key

revelation towards the end of the novel is that they actually represent a different form of

intentionally created, genetically altered posthuman. Male Pures are assessed to ascertain their

mental capabilities and are selected for coding if deemed suitable candidates for an elite force

to police the future New Eden. Partridge initially assesses both his self-worth and value within

the Pure community on the basis of his physical and intellectual capacity to meet the Dome’s

ideal model of the elite male specimen. Unlike his elder brother, Sedge, whom Willux had

identified as physically and mentally elite, Partridge has been classed as neither intellectually

nor physically gifted. Though Sedge was selected for admission to the Dome’s Special Forces

prior to what Partridge had been told was his death, Partridge did not make selection, and in an

insular society that prizes elite abilities, he experiences his limitations as a source of

disappointment. A crucial motivation for Partridge’s journey of resistance against his father is

activated when an anomaly is discovered in his behavioural coding, “the blip in the behavioral

coding. Resistance” (21), flagging his body’s resistance to behavioural manipulation. As he feels

rejected by his own father who enforces the Dome’s ideals of superhumanity and conformity,

Partridge’s behavioural anomaly sparks his desire to find out even more about his past and to

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evade further experimentation to amend his “deficiency.”

Partridge’s status as an anomaly among the Pures foreshadows his burgeoning potential

for political resistance. Just as Jenna Fox desires to think and make choices independently from

her programming, Partridge exercises autonomy by fleeing the Dome before his behavioural

coding overrides his agency: “Partridge doesn’t want to change at all. He wants to know that

what he does comes from himself – even if it’s wrong” (53). In Partridge’s words, he is “not a

ripe specimen, turns out” (105), a sardonic statement made after he has left the Dome and

recognises that his body had become an object for experimentation. In this way, the narrative

portrays the fears individuals hold concerning technologies that impede their potential for free

will. This concern is raised again towards the end of the novel when Aribelle reveals that prior to

the Detonations, she provided Partridge with medication that would interfere with his

behavioural coding. She informs him, “I wanted that to be your own. The right to say no, to

stand up for what’s right. I wanted your character to be kept intact” (306). Partridge exhibits

pride in his ability to resist his programming and nurture individual thought, yet, as the narrative

reveals, his resistance was equally produced by technology—the medication Aribelle supplied to

him prior to the Detonations. That his resistant behaviour is the result of unnatural modifications

illustrates the inconspicuous reach of technological intervention in the world of Pure. Individuals

cannot be certain of the degree to which their bodies and minds have been externally

influenced, disconnecting them from their authentic, ‘natural’ selves, and making it impossible to

determine which aspects of their character, not just their bodies, are human or posthuman.

Baggott depicts the posthuman enhancement occurring inside the Dome as a form of

technological intervention that actually degrades rather than enhances the human body. Before

Partridge flees the Dome, he describes the weakening short-term effects of the coding he has

received, recalling “as the body becomes accustomed to the new skill sets, they can expect

some vertigo, sudden losses of balance that will subside as strength and speed take hold” (19).

The brain becomes temporarily “uncoordinated” and the body “ungainly” (19), leading to

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clumsiness and haphazard recollection of memories. Later in the novel, when Aribelle outlines

the symptoms of Rapid Cell Degeneration, the physical condition that arises as a consequence

of excessive coding—unforeseen side effects of biological tampering—readers see that ‘coding’

also triggers permanent deterioration: “The classic signs are a slight tremor of the hands and

head, a palsy. Eyesight and hearing weaken. The skin deteriorates next… Eventually bones and

muscle erode, and organs fail” (304). For the Dome boys who have already been subjected to

extensive coding, this means that they are potentially consigned to a dramatically shortened and

pain-ridden life. Earlier in the novel, Willux erupts into angered outbursts that may at first be

perceived as a sign of his authoritative character; however, Pressia and Partridge later discover

that they are really symptomatic of the after-effects of brain coding.

Willux’s quest for technological advancement thus drives him to transcend ordinary

human limits of intelligence and the biological integrity of the body, fuelled by the desire for

superior cognitive and physical abilities and for his own agelessness. His ambition is to become

superhuman, yet ironically his own body and character are destroyed by this posthuman pursuit,

portraying the project of exceeding ‘natural’ human boundaries in the pursuit of ‘superhumanity’

as deadly. Although Willux has idealised the category of the ‘pure’ human and used it to classify

the wretches as inferior subhumans, he has also exhibited contempt for natural boundaries in

his endeavour to radically exceed them. In this way, Pure portrays Willux’s vision as inherently

destructive, both in terms of his construction of lethal patterns of Othering to elevate Pures over

wretches, and his failed project of human “enhancement.” In aspiring toward purity and

superhumanity, Willux has produced a breed of posthumans just as devastatingly altered as the

fused wretches. As the extent of his moral and physical degeneration becomes clear, readers

increasingly see him as a leader who lacks the very traits that humanise the wretches: empathy

and a sense of humanity. The absence of ‘humaneness,’ as an internal trait of goodness, as

opposed to biological humanness, becomes a determining factor in readers perceiving the

wretches as more human than the inhumane Willux.

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A chilling aspect of the novel is the revelation of Willux’s covert creation of a

“superspecies” (182) of soldiers imbued with “Hyper-brain[s]” and “hyper-bod[ies]” (169) to serve

as the Dome’s Special Forces unit. Through El Capitan’s perspective, readers come to perceive

this form of superhumanity as a simultaneously thrilling and horrifying version of the posthuman:

“‘They fused them with some nice toys, huh?’ El Capitan says. ‘The guns are state-of-the-art,

and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some computer chips lodged in them somewhere,

smart guns’” (168). These “creatures” (272) are cyborgs who possess enhanced physical

strength, altered to accommodate in-built weapons, with appropriate cognitive and emotional

programming, and enhancements to equip them as living artillery. Far from preserving humanity

as ‘pure,’ El Capitan reveals that Willux has discovered a way to scientifically splice human

biology with animals to construct strange new creatures: “‘Somebody’s learned how to take

every trait that they want from other animals or things and merge them or fuse them with a

human’” (169). In these supersoldiers, Baggott depicts a form of spliced human, machine and

animal posthuman life that is purposefully designed rather than haphazardly produced. As

posthuman creations that are both the embodiment of the violence authorities are willing to

inflict on their citizens, as well as living tools for enacting further violence in the aim of social

control, the supersoldiers offer a terrifying portrait of how technology can magnify egregious

abuses of power.

Although radically altered, El Capitan still recognises the humanness of the soldiers,

observing that “they have oversized hands — no, claws — but are still human” (168). Unlike the

subhuman Beasts, this enhanced version of animal/human hybridity evokes sympathy and pity

rather than fear in characters. A tragic aspect of the narrative unfolds when Partridge discovers

that his brother Sedge did not commit suicide as his father had previously told him, but was in

fact transformed into a Special Forces soldier. Partridge and readers learn that being selected

as ‘elite’ inside the Dome was not a privilege, but rather an outcome that subjected individuals

to brutal, dehumanising forms of posthuman modification. Discovering that Sedge is still alive in

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this form is not a cause for celebration, as the narrative conveys a sense of intense loss at what

he has become. When Lyda leaves the Dome, she encounters a Special Forces soldier for the

first time and her reaction expresses both disbelief and compassion: “‘You were an academy

boy. You became Special Forces. This is what they turned you into?’ She thinks of the small,

elite corps. This can’t be what was done to them. It would be impossibly cruel [. . .] She touches

one of the guns. She can see the place in his arm where the metal meets the folds of his skin’”

(281). While some markers of technological abuse within Pure are far more inconspicuous, like

the devastated post-apocalyptic landscapes outside the Dome these frighteningly augmented

bodies are hypervisible manifestations of Willux’s fanatical vision of posthuman evolution.

Conclusion

Pure serves as a potent warning against technological abuses that threaten not only the

integrity of the organic human body and the landscapes we inhabit, but also complex ontological

terrains. After the Detonations, none of the markers of civilised modernity stand; in their place

are new forms of human life and identity. The novel’s spectrum of posthuman embodiment that

ranges from subhuman to superhuman requires the boundaries between human and Other to

be renegotiated. Throughout Pure, the dissolution of discrete boundaries between human and

technology, and human and Other becomes a pervasive source of conflict. For Pressia, the

process of overcoming the anxieties induced by her fused embodiment entails the alignment of

her own self-perception with the positive views of others. Through Pressia’s journey, Baggott’s

narrative challenges the perspective that obtaining ‘purity’ is the only pathway to self-

acceptance and instead endorses the embrace of embodied deviance as a signifier of

experience and survival.

While Cinder and The Adoration of Jenna Fox offer troubling renderings of how ethical

violation and rupturing the integrity of the human body can cause individuals intense distress

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and anxiety, these themes are presented in Pure in a manner that portrays excessive cruelty

and the infliction of suffering on both micro and macro scales. Baggott’s vision is disturbing and

disconcerting—its images of fused hybridity leaving us with indelible impressions of

posthumanity that expose the divisive politics of difference and the necessity of

reconceptualising what we regard as human. Clear parallels can be drawn between Willux’s

premeditated plans for mass annihilation and fascist discourses that have historically promoted

ethnic purity to dehumanise “subhuman” populations to the benefit of a select, privileged group.

Sociologist José Casanova asserts that the prefix “post” can be indicative of “a subsequent

phase within the same phenomenon,” or “it may point to something radically different, to a new

epoch that transcends, goes beyond, and leaves behind a phenomenon without having yet a

label to characterize the new” (27). While the term “posthuman” may suggest the transcendence

of being human in favour of a new and different epoch of ‘humanness,’ in Pure the power

structures that permitted mass-scale violence in the human epoch of the novel’s ‘Before’ persist

in the posthuman world, regenerating in the wake of the apocalypse.

For Baggott, the posthuman is a narrative vehicle for exploring how individuals can

retain their humanity—their integrity, hope and autonomy—in inhumane and oppressive political

systems that subordinate personal subjectivity and freedom to the agendas of the powerful.

Pure confronts readers with new visions of the human by portraying posthumans with radically

disfigured and fused bodies who can still be counted as human due to their intrinsic qualities.

The novel portrays resistance and resilience as core human traits that persist in individuals who

have been forced to adapt to a new paradigm of normality. Pure portrays individuals who find it

necessary to vehemently resist authorities that hold the power to determine who and what

counts as human. Through Baggott’s construction of posthuman characters who possess a solid

sense of justice, resilience, a longing for self-understanding or self-differentiation, we recognise

that it is their beliefs, desires and relationships that make them human.

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Readers of Pure are continually prompted to ask: where does humanity end and where

does the posthuman begin? The answers the novel provides are never clear, as Baggott wants

us to examine whether the boundaries that segregate human from Other can really be cleanly

demarcated. Ultimately, Pure’s reluctance to abandon humanist values reveals the limitations of

both the ‘natural’ human and how it has been defined, as well as the persistence of residual

elements of the human. Pure prompts readers to recognise that in its posthuman world, far

more complex conceptions of humanness are required to accommodate a broad range of

embodied difference under the banner of the human.

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CHAPTER 4

Stephanie Saulter’s Gemsigns: The Genetically Engineered Splice and the Politics of the Deviant Posthuman Body

In Stephanie Saulter’s 2013 science fiction novel Gemsigns, the nexus of scientific

classification, social engineering and the corporate manipulation of human beings becomes a

rich site for investigating the politics of the deviant posthuman body. This chapter shifts from

focusing on young adult to adult science fiction, and in doing so the emphasis of my analysis

moves away from examining how posthuman embodiment shapes individual subjectivity in the

construction of exploring identity, to exploring more deeply how posthuman embodiment factors

into social and political structures on a macro level. In particular, I build on my earlier

discussions of posthuman monstrosity, anomalousness and deviance in relation to gender and

disability studies, to consider how the posthuman imaginary can also be mobilised to interrogate

the marginalised positions of those oppressed on the basis of race. While the chapters on

Cinder and The Adoration of Jenna Fox considered the subjective implications of literal forms of

cyborg embodiment, and the chapter on Pure examined an alternative form of posthuman

embodiment—the technologically created ‘fused’ hybrid—this chapter examines an alternative

form of posthuman: the genetically engineered ‘splice.’

Women science fiction authors have long engaged with the implications of genetic

engineering on the embodiment and identities of both humans and their many Others, though to

varying degrees. Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, for instance, hints

at the historical use of genetic engineering that has shaped the biological makeup of the

Gethenian population, although genetic difference does not play a significant role in the novel’s

portrayal of gender politics. As mentioned in the Introduction of this thesis, Octavia Butler’s 1987

Dawn trilogy, explicitly deals with the genetically engineered alien Other in a way that speaks

directly to the politics of racial difference. Butler’s depiction of the alien Oankali, a species that

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has evolved by adopting the genetic characteristics of other species throughout the universe,

explores humanity’s visceral rejection of the Other on the basis of embodied difference, a clear

allegory for social exclusion of those whose gender, race or culture classifies them as “deviant”

from human norms. In particular, Dawn presents the genetic mixing of human and Other as

disruptive to the presumed integrity and purity of ‘normal’ human biological boundaries, and

therefore a source of deep-seated anxiety for those seeking to uphold such discrete boundaries.

In Nancy Kress’s 1991 novel Beggars in Spain, a genetically engineered minority labelled the

‘Sleepless’ have been enhanced so that they do not require sleep and possess heightened

levels of intelligence in comparison to the human majority of non-engineered ‘Sleepers.’ Like

Saulter’s Gemsigns, Kress’s narrative does raise questions about how to regard and treat a

genetically different minority, especially when this minority possesses ‘superhuman’ abilities.

However, the questions prompted by the novel require complex answers, and to this end

Beggars in Spain leaves readers wanting. Similar to Butler’s novel, Gemsigns employs the

figure of the genetically modified Other to explore the corollaries of exclusion and rejection on

the basis of perceived difference, yet Saulter’s narrative focuses far more on portraying the

political project of how to accommodate the Other under a redefined banner of the ‘human.’ In

this regard, Gemsigns provides some of the answers that Kress’s novel fails to provide in its

nuanced portrait of the ideological perspectives and social systems that work to either include or

exclude, empower or disenfranchise, and humanise or dehumanise the genetically different.

Throughout Gemsigns, Saulter mobilises the posthuman trope of the engineered splice

in order to explore the political ramifications of integrating a “deviant” population into “norm” or

normal human society. The splice is best understood as a human being whose distinctive

genotype has been purposefully altered, refined or spliced with the genes of another species.

Lars Schmeink believes that the beginning of the twenty-first century heralded a shift in science

fiction “away from a cyberpunk imaginary, best embodied in Haraway’s cyborg and the visceral

technology of mechanical implants, body augmentation, and… virtualities” towards the splice,

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which he claims better expresses the concerns of genetic engineering, xenotransplantation, and

virology (7). The spliced figures in Gemsigns are an oppressed population of genetically

modified humans, labelled ‘gems’ for short, who struggle to win recognition from the dominant

‘norm’ population as equals. While Meyer’s Cinder and Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox

use the cyborg bodies of adolescent female protagonists to explore the subjective experience of

human/technological hybrids, Saulter’s Gemsigns employs the splice to explore the way

different definitions of human identity can be mobilised to either challenge or perpetuate the

systematic, institutionalised subjugation of Others.

In this chapter, I examine the ways Saulter constructs an explicit analogy between norm

attitudes towards the “deviant” posthuman bodies of the gems and the historic and cultural

patterns of racism. Through the spliced bodies of the gems, Saulter explores how the treatment

of embodied difference as a sign of biological and physical deviance can be used to justify

systemic forms of exploitation and division. The ‘gemtech’ corporations responsible for creating

the gems initially categorised them according to their predetermined social purpose, as hard

labourers or surrogate mothers for example, employing a taxonomy which foregrounded their

status as commodities as distinct from the human population. Motivated by profit and the desire

to consolidate their corporate power, the gemtechs of Gemsigns are canny, sometimes

clandestine proponents of segregation. Saulter portrays a posthuman society poised on the

cusp of critical political decisions that will determine how the gems should be regarded by the

society responsible for producing them. The narrative exposes how patterns of policing

difference are central to the construction of political and social systems. By juxtaposing the

competing voices and arguments of the oppressors and the oppressed, Saulter dramatises the

underlying motivations of all players grappling for a stakehold in the future political and social

landscape. The right to autonomy and personal choice is at the heart of the struggle for liberty

which the gems are staging. While the gemtechs seek to reserve such rights only for those they

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regard as incontestably human and ‘normal’, the gems and their allies articulate a clear call for

oppressed populations to be granted these rights as social equals.

The broader politics at work in Saulter’s imagined society deal with the economic, legal

and social implications of integrating a “nonhuman” group into human society. Throughout the

novel, Saulter’s storytelling balances the personal and the political as she portrays the conflict

between the gems and the ‘norm’ corporate and governmental authorities who seek sustained

ownership and control over their living commodities. Saulter examines the ideological lenses of

different personalities in this conflict by dramatising their subjective viewpoints, aligning the

sympathies of readers with gem characters who are the victims of extreme prejudice,

exploitation and injustice. A common thread of this thesis is the way the novels in my corpus

give voice to marginalised individuals whose posthuman status marks them as oppressed,

excluded or commodified. While in novels like Cinder, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, and The

Stone Gods, the respective authors give substantial voice to the subjective experiences of their

female cyborg protagonists, in Gemsigns, Saulter features the voices and perspectives of

multiple posthuman individuals. In a similar vein to Julianna Baggott’s novel Pure, which

captures the individual struggles of more than one posthuman protagonist, Saulter portrays the

personal suffering of various gems in vivid detail. Alongside the gem heroine Aryel Morningstar,

a number of gem characters such as Gaela, Bal, Wenda and Donal feature as prominent voices

throughout the narrative, showcasing the various permutations that Other the gems on the basis

of their apparent differences. To this end, the novel portrays the varying forms of

institutionalised violence, dehumanisation and exploitation to which these posthuman characters

are subjected.

I argue that when the posthuman gems are perceived as monsters, as threats to “the

myth and integrity of the base level zero, normal human” (MacCormack, Posthuman Teratology

293), they are situated at the juncture of different discourses of deviance and modes of

transgression. In Gemsigns, this positioning affords some individuals the transgressive potential

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to move beyond being perceived as physically or behaviourally monstrous to challenge

entrenched mythologies that position biologically ‘normal’ humans as superior and exceptional.

Whereas in Pure, wretch characters struggle to come to terms with that they perceive as their

own monstrosity, experiencing visceral disgust, and indeed self-disgust, in response to their

various fusions and disfigurements, in Gemsigns the gems are perceived as monstrous only in

the eyes of key antagonists. On the whole, the gems are accepting of embodied difference,

even when their bodies strongly deviate from biological standards of the norm population. This

chapter analyses Saulter’s use of a Christian allegory of salvation that retrospectively explores

the politics of embodied difference at work in well-known biblical narratives. Gemsigns portrays

how Christian narratives can be manipulated by religious authorities to either demonise or deify

certain human/Other figures. In this regard, Saulter’s novel is as much about the past as it is

about our future. Gemsigns’ narrative structure, character arcs and layers of allusion are imbued

with religious resonances that prompt us to question the role of theological beliefs in

conceptualisations of what counts as human.

In the first section of the chapter that follows, I examine Saulter’s construction of clear

analogies to racial difference that enable a critique of racially driven systems of social

stratification as gem advocates struggle for acknowledgement of their human status. As the

conflict between the gems and norms plays out, and prominent gem advocates rally for legal

reform and acknowledgement of their human status, this critique extends to an interrogation of

colonial practice and paternalistic modes of politics that prioritise control of the gems over

recognition of their rights and liberties. I consider paternalistic forms of manipulation employed

by gemtech corporations in contrast to the inclusive politics of gem leaders, analysing Saulter’s

treatment of conflicting ideologies that have the potential to either subjugate or empower the

gems. The second section of this chapter explores how Saulter’s portrayal of the Othered gem

population humanises them as heterogeneous individuals, while analysing the construction of a

social and political landscape made up of conflicting gem and norm perspectives. Thirdly, my

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discussion explores how gemtech corporations and anti-gem religious radicals leverage

discourses of monstrosity in order to subordinate the gems to subhuman status. The most

dramatic instances of this occur when discourses of monstrosity and religion collide, as Saulter

utilises religious allusion to capture anti-gem perspectives that dehumanise and demonise the

gems on the basis of biological deviance, or elevate others to superhuman realms. In analysing

how the trope of the splice engages with discourses of race and monstrosity in Gemsigns, I

suggest that Saulter’s novel warns against the inadvertent consequences of subordinating

humanity and ethics to the aims of scientific progress, profit and power.

The posthuman splice: representing discourses of racial difference

Allusions to slavery and systems of colonial control are inescapable in Gemsigns. As the novel

opens, gemtech corporations are preoccupied with how to sustain a system that will continue to

exploit the unique traits and skills of the gems. The gems, on the other hand, aim to be

recognised as human and to liberate themselves from the system of indenture that perpetuates

their ongoing commodification. Throughout Gemsigns, the figure of the posthuman splice—a

disenfranchised, nonhuman entity excluded from active and equal citizenship—becomes a

cogent metaphor for examining discourses of racial difference. Saulter’s representation of the

exploitation and exclusion of spliced individuals invites readers to explore the complex personal,

social and political dimensions of race relations operating in human societies both past and

present.

Critical race theory offers a productive lens for considering the politics of difference

operating in Gemsigns. The ways in which European colonials armed themselves with biological

theories about the inferiority of black races in order to relegate the Africans to the domains of

non-human and animal find clear parallels in the novel (Nayar, Posthumanism 33). The gemtech

authorities use a variety of methods to portray the gems as bestial, and thus inhuman. In

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discussing the language and ideologies that aided colonisers in the dehumanisation of the

African people throughout the twentieth century, in The Wretched of the Earth Frantz Fanon

highlights how the amplification of perceived animalistic characteristics reinforce subjugation:

the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms. He speaks

of the yellow man’s reptilian motions, of the stink of the native quarter, of breeding

swarms, of foulness, of spawn, of gesticulations. When the settler seeks to describe the

native fully in exact terms he constantly refers to the bestiary. (42)

The dehumanising attitude Fanon illustrates here speaks to the tendency of colonial authorities

to subordinate native races to the category of Other in order to justify their ongoing oppression.

Holly Jones and Nicholaos Jones argue that the flawed logic of racist systems is supported by

ideologies that privilege particular notions of ‘human.’ Race is a factor that “legitimates violence,

dehumanizes racial minorities, extends agential capacities, and creates inequality,” as human

bodies become “inescapably racialized” in their dependence on social factors and institutions

“that create, sustain, and shape the impacts of racial hierarchies” (Jones and Jones 46). Saulter

presents the hurdle of genetic and embodied difference as a core aspect of the politics at play in

the novel, representing a world in which the oppressed minority must struggle against the

weight of entrenched ideological, political and social systems to overcome a subjugation akin to

slavery.

Gemsigns commences at a time when rising political and social tensions between the

norms and gems are approaching a crisis point. Some norms are troubled by the possibility that

the United Nations’ recently released ‘Declaration of the Principles of Human Fraternity’ could

completely rewrite the rules that have governed the two-tiered society for over a century. The

Declaration outlines a new set of principles that require societies to legally provide fundamental

rights for “all human beings, regardless of origin, nation, heritage, circumstance, condition,

capability, conviction or disposition” (86). Despite this framework promising to provide political

protection for all of humanity, inclusive of gems, it remains unclear how the norm and gem

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populations will live together under the same umbrella of social codes. Gems are still

understandably wary of norm authorities, and hesitant to embrace their new status as liberated

and equal; norms are yet to fully recognise the principles that the Declaration prescribes in the

real world. As the norm and gem populations in Gemsigns debate the terms and implications of

the Declaration, political tensions heighten as both groups grapple with the social, legal and

economic considerations of recognising the gems as fully human. While “supporters of the

status quo, led by the gemtechs” (61), argue that the gems have no cause for reasonable

objection to continuing to fulfil the roles for which they were created, the gems and their allies

argue for their right to be recognised as human and thereby equal.

Gemsigns can be classified as biopunk fiction, a subgenre of science fiction

characterised as “genetically engineered posthuman sf” (Schmeink 10). Saulter uses the

conventions of this genre—imagery of the splice, the helix and the politics of genetic

engineering—to portray how embodied difference plays into the commodification of her spliced

lifeforms. More so than the other novels examined in this thesis, Gemsigns employs posthuman

tropes to explore the politics of the deviant body, critiquing how authorities manipulate

perceptions of embodied difference to justify the systematic subjugation of Othered individuals.

Gayatri Spivak identifies toxic ideologies that have historically condoned injustices against

people by categorising them as less than human:

The great doctrines of identity of the ethical universal, in terms of which liberalism

thought out its ethical programmes, played history false, because the identity was

disengaged in terms of who was and who was not human. That's why all of these

projects, the justification of slavery, as well as the justification of Christianization,

seemed to be alright; because, after all, these people had not graduated into

humanhood, as it were. (229)

Within the novel, it is on the basis that humans are exceptional and superior to all life forms that

gems are Othered, excluded and disenfranchised.

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Despite the promises of the Declaration, residual beliefs about gems’ inhumanity are

central to the political confrontation of the novel’s opening. While global authorities begin to

legally recognise the gems as human beings, public sentiment remains divided as gemtechs

and anti-gem groups insist the gems should continue to be regarded as subhuman

commodities. The history of suffering experienced by the gems had not been recognised as a

valid cause for social concern in the wider society until the Declaration proposed that they were

worthy of inclusion under the banner of the ‘human.’ This defining political moment is the first

step towards recognising the gems’ entitlement to liberation from exploitative and dehumanising

working conditions and measures of categorisation, and invasive forms of surveillance. The

perspective that the gems should be regarded as both human and equal is therefore one that

challenges deeply entrenched ideologies in the norm populace.

The narrative relates that the gems were initially created by human genetic engineering

corporations in response to the ‘Syndrome,’ an unprecedented and devastating disease caused

by overstimulation of the human nervous system by a range of information technologies that

threatened to wipe out humanity. The events of the novel take place in the year 130AS, with

Anno Domini (AD) replaced by AS which stands for ‘After Syndrome.’ Saulter has amended the

Gregorian calendar to signal the commencement of a new era in human history—where

humans have moved from obeying the commands of God, to playing God. One hundred and

thirty years on from the outbreak of the Syndrome, the gems form a distinct underclass, marked

as overtly different from the ‘norm’ population, a name which encapsulates their status as the

“ideal” biological human identity from which the gems are perceived to deviate. Early in the

novel, Saulter provides the backstory to the central narrative in a media article labelled “HOW

WE GOT HERE: The Syndrome, the fight for survival and the rise of gemtech” (51),

supplementing the main narrative thread to provide historical context to the predicaments of her

characters and locating the novel as a part of history. This article examines the impact of

genetic modification on the trajectory of the human race, ahead of an upcoming European

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Conference that will determine the future rights and liberties of the gem population. The article

relates that the Syndrome was discovered to be terminal for humanity and required genetic

modification to all humans. However, in the course of this manipulation it was realised that

humans could be purposefully engineered to suit the “under-served needs of the market” (57).

The rights of the genetically engineered children whose lives were created and manipulated to

meet the demands of their society were blatantly disregarded by Gemtech authorities and the

majority of the norm population who profited from their ongoing subjugation. In illustrating the

norms’ denial of responsibility for the rights and welfare of the gems as scientific creations,

Gemsigns depicts the ethical fallibility of authorities who deny certain groups human status.

The gems living in 130AS are not the same as those created in the first wave of genetic

engineering and mass surrogacy that aimed to rescue and reboot humanity. According to the

gemtechs and the norm population, the original gems were designed as a necessary “stopgap”

(58) to meet labour shortages and fulfil menial or dangerous roles. These gems were raised in

creches to be uneducated, illiterate and integrated into the workforce early, giving birth to a

“two-tier society” (59) where the gems formed an oppressed and exploited underclass in total

subservience to the Gemtechs and governments who created them. A second wave of gems

was produced and the commercialisation of biological and social engineering shaped the

emerging politics of post-Syndrome London. As bioengineering companies practiced “their art

on the human double helix, turning out ever more exotic and expensive products” (60), they

shifted their attention to the creation of specialised gems equipped to meet the evolving

demands of modern society. Some gems possess hyperspectral vision or have hybrid

animal/human characteristics such as the combination of gills and lungs or cat-like night vision,

while others are bred to become surrogates, forced into perpetual cycles of pregnancy, birth and

nursing. Saulter emphasises the heterogeneity of this underclass of posthuman individuals by

underscoring their rich diversity. At the same time, the stark physical contrasts between gems

and norms are a significant cause of their ongoing oppression.

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The novel’s title underscores the strong desire of authorities of Saulter’s future London

society to reinforce segregation between human and posthuman groups. To assure clear

differentiation between norm and gem populations, industry standards determined that each

gem should bear a striking ‘gemsign,’ a vibrant phosphorescent hair colour that visibly

distinguished them from norms. Persistent references to characters’ distinctive gemsigns

throughout the novel highlight Saulter’s purposeful interrogation of how authorities and society

utilise visible markers of difference to categorise, monitor and subordinate Othered groups. The

Syndrome-safe population of norms had been genetically engineered to ensure that disabilities,

deformities and other aberrations in size and shape were no longer potential anomalies of

natural procreation. However, as experimental technologies produced strong variations amongst

the gems of the post-Syndrome world, the physical differences between the gems mark them as

just as different from each other as they are from the norms. Gems of the new world possess

enhanced cognitive and social abilities meaning that they can “assess their own circumstances,

note the discrepancies between themselves and the rest of humanity, and demand redress,”

refusing to submit to a status quo that reinforces their status as “subnormals” (60). These new

gems can manipulate online media channels, exposing horrific truths of their ongoing

maltreatment and rally in organised ways against the abuses of governments and corporations.

As part of their project to claim agency and equality, the gems expose fresh revelations of the

“errors, accidents and deaths” (61) produced by the unintended consequences of

bioengineering experimentation. Once the horrific treatment of exploited gems becomes public

knowledge, educated members of norm society from academic institutions begin to draw

associations between their brutal mistreatment and the immense loss of life during the Middle

Passage with the forced transportation of African slaves (61). This explicit connection between

the subjection of the gems and African colonisation makes the allegorical quality of Gemsigns

clear as genetic and physical differences between populations in Saulter’s fictional world mirror

historical patterns of entrenched racism.

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The saviour figure of Gemsigns, Aryel Morningstar, is the “de facto leader” (38) of the

gems and their most persuasive and respected mouthpiece in rallying for social and political

reform in the wake of the Declaration’s release. Aryel uses her sharp wit and political intuition to

garner public support for the gems in the movement towards strengthened social unity and

equality as she takes on historic systems of segregation. At the outset of the novel, Aryel is

portrayed as severely deformed by a large bulge that gives her the appearance of a hunchback.

She conceals this “deformity” beneath a large, black shroud, and the mystery surrounding her

disfigurement and her origins is the source of ongoing speculation as the narrative progresses.

Norms continually grapple with her perceptibly incongruous traits of beauty, deformity,

intelligence and charm. Aryel’s appearance as a deformed gem is a significant focus of the

narrative as norms continually underestimate her intellectual acuity based on her perceptibly

monstrous physical features. The social judgement of her physical body as deviant and a sign of

her intrinsic inferiority and limitation is revealed to be a dangerously flawed assumption. Both

key characters and the reader gradually realise that Aryel has the ability to skilfully manipulate

such erroneous presumptions to gain political leverage on behalf of the oppressed gem

population.

Alongside Aryel, Saulter features the voices of a number of gem characters throughout

the narrative to amplify the suffering and limitation that characterises life as an oppressed

posthuman Other. These central characters include Gaela Provis and her husband, Bal, gems

who remain sceptical that the Declaration will dramatically reshape their status as citizens.

Saulter presents Gaela as a gem with her own unique markers of difference, accentuating her

struggles with both the physical and psychological effects of being biotechnologically produced.

Similarly, Bal, a gem refugee from the Himalayan mines, is all too familiar with the injustices of

“forced repatriation and indenture” (8), and continues to live in a state of doubt and fear that the

Declaration may—at least initially—serve as a political bandaid to an epidemic social problem of

divisions beyond reparation. Gaela and Bal live with their adopted son, Gabriel, who they

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discovered as an abandoned infant and took into their care to raise as their own child. While

Gabriel does not possess a visible gemsign and his history is initially unknown, his emerging

telepathic abilities indicate that, like Gaela, he is extraordinary and has likely been subjected to

genetic engineering. As the narrative unravels the truth of Gabriel’s past, he becomes a key

player in exposing the brutal extent of the violations inflicted on those reduced to scientific

specimens for posthuman experimentation.

The segregation of the gems is made patent in their geographic exclusion from norm

society. In 130AS, many gems reside in a community known as the Squats, a place the narrator

describes as “a tiny tract of alien territory carved out of the heart of London” (8). The Squats

serve as housing for the gems who first banded together to find independence and strength in

solidarity. At the start of the novel, what was once a budding community of a few gem families

and friends has become a target destination for gems seeking refuge in London in light of the

new political unrest. Saulter evokes the language of imperialism when describing the Squats as

a “colony of the radically altered” (9), alluding to the geographic separation between gems and

norms that exacerbates the division between the two groups. Joshua Lund argues that in terms

of racial segregation, territory has always played a crucial role in reinforcing politics of

marginalisation and control over minorities. He writes: “Race is traditionally thought about in

terms of people, but ultimately (and originally) its politics becomes comprehensible only when it

is contemplated in territorial terms: race is always more or less explicitly, the racialization of

space, the naturalization of segregation” (75). While the setting of the Squats provides a ‘safe

haven’ for the gems, Gaela is aware that in concentrating their population within a confined

geographic location, the gems are making themselves easier to track and, inevitably, control. In

this regard, the Squats operate as a ghetto, an urban space occupied by the minority group to

form an ethnic enclave.

Gaela is characterised as a gem woman who is acutely aware of how the gems’ social

position as a marginalised population is reinforced by legal, ideological and geographic

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complexities. At the start of the novel, as Gaela moves towards the Squats, she attempts to

avoid various forms of heavy surveillance designed to track the movement of gems as they

arrive and leave the community. Her movements are purposeful and deliberate, and the narrator

highlights that she cannot easily traverse the city without authorities being aware of her

whereabouts and actions: “The lane she was in ran directly towards the Squats, but she

changed course again to avoid a motion sensor, the infrared beam as clear to her as a red rope

stretched across her path. The authorities were evidently trying to monitor the numbers moving

into the inner-city colony of the radically altered” (9). Grouped as a ”colony,” the gems fear that

they are potentially endangering themselves. While “there were a lot of very good reasons for

newly liberated, often baffled and disoriented gems to band together” (10), finding unity in their

collective histories of suffering, Gaela acknowledges that “they were in effect corralling

themselves, the more easily to be counted and catalogued” (10). These verbs suggest

measures of scientific control in the form of quantification and labelling that reduce human

subjects to mere inputs of data. Gaela’s “worry” and “deep-resentment” (10) about the extensive

gathering of data accompanying the integration of gems into human society is exacerbated by

her knowledge that the Declaration’s promises of political freedom have not yet reduced the

degree of control imposed by authorities to regulate the gem population.

The investigation of ‘genetic anthropologist’ Dr Eli Walker to determine whether the

gems are psychologically and behaviourally capable of being integrated into norm society is

integral to the main narrative thread of the novel. Eli has been employed to provide an objective,

informed perspective on the “gem question” (296) that is grounded in scientific inquiry. His

research positions him in service of gem rights and liberties, a purpose which places him in

direct opposition to gemtech corporate leaders who perceive his work as a threat to their biotech

empires and the hold they have maintained over their gem commodities. Eli aspires to neutrally

assess the potential threat that bringing complete freedom to the gems could pose to norm

society, and the extent to which legal parameters for controlling the gems should be maintained

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or completely revoked, from an anthropological perspective. Working closely with Great Britain’s

Acting Commissioner for Gem Affairs, Dr Robert Trench, Eli debunks the assumption that the

genetically engineered differences that have alienated gems from human status can continue to

justify their status as commodities requiring strict external governance. The Walker Report,

released at the Conference on “Day Five” (253), is the culmination of Eli’s findings, where he

concludes that these very differences actually serve to strengthen the pro-gem perspective of

the gems as incontestably human. Consequently, Eli’s report becomes a core component in

deciding the outcomes of the gems in their quest for liberation from the stringent monitoring

system proposed by the gemtech corporations. Crucial to his consideration is the question of

whether the gems are too physically, biologically and socially different from the norm human

population to be classified as human. Over the days leading up to the Conference and the

public revelation of Eli’s findings, Saulter builds a multifaceted picture of the divergent political

viewpoints and modes of political manoeuvring utilised by key gem and norm leaders.

The most prominent and vocal antagonist is Zavcka Klist, a character considered “to be

the real power at Bel’Natur, itself arguably the most powerful and sophisticated of the

bioindustrialist conglomerates” (21). If Gemsigns can be seen as an extended battle between

the gemtechs and the gems they have created, then Zavcka represents the collective agendas

of the gemtech corporations that seek to maintain authority over the gems, as she negotiates for

a system that grants the gem population some agency but ‘within limits.’ As a leading gemtech

corporation, Bel’Natur contributed a great deal to—and profited greatly from—the genetic

engineering boom and is responsible for many of the egregious errors, injustices and

exploitative systems that affect the lives of the gems. Early in the novel, the position of gemtech

corporations is reflected in Zavcka’s concern that the Declaration will destabilise the power

structure that grants the gemtechs legal possession of the gems. Zavcka attempts to persuade

Eli to align with her argument that the gems should not be granted complete freedom due to the

potential unpredictability of their behaviour. Using video footage of a gem committing an act of

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extreme violence as evidence, she argues that there is a foreseeable threat that if the gems are

not continuously regulated by the gemtechs who possess knowledge of their unique tendencies

and behaviour patterns, norm lives will be endangered. With the gemtechs in a position where

they may lose both profit and power depending on the legal implications of the Declaration,

gemtech leaders such as Zavcka are driven to escalate tensions between norm and gem

populations to emphasise that their differences are irreconcilable.

The novel dramatises the subjugation of the posthuman gems at the hands of

commercially- and power-driven corporations. In doing so, it mirrors how certain races or social

groups have been excluded from the category of human by virtue of their physical or biological

difference, with those in authority justifying their systematic, institutionalised subjugation.

Zavcka is characterised as calculating in her ability to frame her desire for sustained control

over the gems as concern for the welfare of the wider society. In order to retain the gems as

property, ensuring Bel’Natur’s continuing economic dominance, Zavcka asserts her argument

that behavioural unpredictability of the gems justifies their need for sustained external

governance. On “Day One” (13) of the narrative, Zavcka is immediately established as the

antagonist when she locates Eli in a public train carriage with hopes to align his research with

the interests of Bel’Natur. Her colonialist undertones are evident as she tells Eli that the gems

“are best suited to the environments they were engineered for, and the work they’ve been

designed to do” (21), asserting her belief that gems should continue to be socially regulated in a

manner that enables them to fulfil the roles for which they were designed.

Zavcka’s justification of sustained institutionalised control over the gems as a measure

of protecting the rest of the community from harm aligns with what many critics refer to as John

Stuart Mill’s ‘harm principle,’ a concept first outlined in his seminal essay ”On Liberty” in 1859.

Mill advocated for political measures that restricted the amount of control that authorities could

wield over the people they govern, arguing that control over certain individuals and groups can

be necessary when it is in the service of protecting others from harm: “the only purpose for

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which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his

will, is to prevent harm to others” (14). While this aspiration would appear beneficial for all

members of society on the surface, Saulter’s novel critiques the ways in which those in power

can seize such a premise as justification for upholding exclusionary systems and values.

Zavcka utilises the logic of the harm principle to put forward a case in favour of sustaining rigid

legal restriction of the gems, arguing that in denying them greater freedom, the norm population

are protected from harm. The paternalism inherent in her ideology is evident as she argues,

“They cannot be simply left alone to tuck themselves away in unmonitored enclaves as though

they were all the same as each other, or the same as us. They’re not” (emphasis in original; 20).

Zavcka’s denigration of the gems as subhuman marks her position of control as threatening to

their future, evident in her vehement rejection of their status as human beings, “‘there are

thousands of those people’ — she spat the word out as though it were bitter — ‘wandering

around amongst ordinary human beings, whereabouts unknown half the time, with extraordinary

capabilities and unclear intentions’” (20). Saulter’s italicisation places emphasis on the extreme

resistance and even revulsion Zavcka experiences in regarding gems and norms as both

human and equal. Zavcka’s language reveals her utter disregard for the welfare of the gems,

highlighting the prejudiced, parochial attitudes held by leaders whose decisions acutely affect

the lives of these minorities. Further, in manipulating the prejudices of others to achieve their

own ends, biased leaders like Zavcka incite division and violence between gems and norms in

order to demonstrate their incompatibility as social equals. Zavcka incites anti-gem factions of

the norm community to engage in violent assaults, inflaming social relationships to illustrate that

the unpredictability of the gems makes them incapable of living harmoniously under the same

set of social codes as norm society. Narrative tension is heightened as Saulter exposes these

political ruses to the reader, revealing that the struggle for legal and social reform is made even

more problematic as the gems must overcome the covert manipulations of key anti-gem political

players.

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Gemsigns presents a powerful parallel to the history of racism inflicted on colonised

Others in the real world through Zavcka’s divisive arguments for sustaining a regulatory system

that permits ongoing control over the gem population. Zavcka continually invokes an ‘us versus

them’ narrative, a damaging binary that reinforces the boundaries between self and Other—as

well as human and nonhuman—as she puts forward a calculated argument for sustaining

polarisation between gems and norms. Zavcka’s feigned regard for gem freedom of choice

thinly veils a plan that allows gemtech corporations to maintain as much authority as the legal

parameters of the Declaration permit:

No more mandatory indentureships, we understand those days are over. But they need

to be channelled into appropriate roles, with appropriate management and oversight. It

makes absolutely no sense for a gem with high-res memory, say, or a gillung, or an

organ regenerator, with all that potential, with all that value, to end up driving taxis or

sweeping streets. Or on welfare, which is frankly more likely. (22)

The connotations of the gems being “channelled” into set roles determined by gemtech

authorities as they see fit strongly indicate the corporations’ intention to ensure the gems’

complete lack of autonomy and freedom of choice. Saulter’s deliberate emphasis on the word

“value” implies that underlying Zavcka’s motivations is a driving desire to maintain a system that

still allows gemtech corporations to leverage gem abilities, with the worth of gems lying in their

status as useful social commodities rather than their status as liberated, autonomous

individuals.

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Social revolution and political inclusion

There are events which ripple down the helix, maiming and moulding all the moments

that follow (Saulter 1).

Aligning with James Gunn’s definitions of science fiction as “the literature of change” (vii),

Saulter’s language in this opening extract of her novel establishes the image of the spiralling

helix, which gives shape to the kinds of change that can be evoked by genetic engineering—

irreversible shifts that propel humanity onto a radically new course of progress. Saulter’s novel

highlights that these kinds of change inhibit any possibility of return to what was once regarded

as fixed, stable and incontestably human. Saulter emphasises the irreversibly transformative

quality of the posthuman revolution in Gemsigns that has reinscribed the genetic fabric of

human beings. Revolution is represented as a social phenomenon just as common to human

history as periods of stability. Saulter interrogates the assumption that revolutions consist of a

clean epistemic break from the preceding era, using the image of the spiral in contrast to a

circuit to suggest a clear cause and effect correlation between significant historical events and

the seemingly insignificant moments that triggered them: “No two moments are exactly the

same, for travelling the circuit conveys a momentum that displaces the point of return from the

point of departure. Life proceeds in a spiral, pushing outward and forward, expanding and

accelerating as the players whirl through their evolutions, building a vortex” (1). The symbol of

the helix references both this pattern of human revolution as well as the genomes that encode

human beings with their distinctive makeup. Saulter’s posthuman imagery expresses the

potential for a revolution that occurs as the splice utterly disrupts rigid classifications of identity

that have historically shaped human societies in the world of the novel.

The importance of storytelling to human culture is an embedded concern of the novel, as

Saulter directs us to consider the conscious choices that authors make to orientate the reader

and determine which voices to prioritise in a narrative. Eli is the first character introduced in the

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narrative, and as a morally forthright scientist, he embodies an ethically guided approach to the

social issue of how to effectively integrate the gems into human society and resolve residual

tensions. The narrator introduces Eli as: “a principled man. To himself he is a player in a

morality tale, unravelling dissimulations. He knows, or thinks he knows, what the choices are.

His own righteousness is in no doubt. He has the conviction of a man who fights on the side of

angels” (2). Saulter’s omniscient narration reveals a man guided by moral judgment to right

injustices. As a pro-gem advocate who possesses knowledge, title and social standing, Eli is

equipped to challenge the interests of authorities and corporations who prefer to resolve the

‘gem problem’ with force and underhanded power-plays. As Saulter establishes Eli as a

character on “the side of angels,” she also foreshadows his prominent role in the religious

allusions that develop throughout the narrative. This characterisation resonates with the Hebrew

meaning of Eli—“to ascend”—which associates the name with ascension to heavenly realms as

a God figure (Rush 64). The Christian and Judaic origins of Eli’s name provide insight into the

religious resonances of Saulter’s construction of Eli as a significant leader. In the first book of

Samuel in the Bible’s Old Testament, Eli is a priest and prophet figure who functioned as one of

Israel’s primary leaders. Frank Spina explains that “Eli’s leadership derived from his being

simultaneously a ‘judge’ and a specially called priest” (71), a key parallel to Saulter’s

characterisation of Eli as a man of authority called to bring his own judgements to

circumstances facing the gems. Connections can also be made to the role Elijah played in

Judaism as a figure who announces the heralding of the new messianic era. When existing

religious laws prescribed in the Jewish scriptures of the Talmud fail to answer crucial questions

of law and practice, it is up to Elijah, who “in the final era” will “resolve all those lingering

questions” (O’Kane 60). As a herald of a Messianic Age, with answers for how humanity can

move forward into a new era of unity and peace, the Elijah figure is reflected in Saulter’s Eli

Walker, a man responsible for articulating perspectives crucial to renewed global harmony in

post-Declaration London. Saulter purposefully weaves layers of religious allusion into her

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narrative at the levels of character, setting and symbolic events to intensify the conflict between

the two opposing groups. As with common storytelling conventions in religious narratives that pit

good against evil, the reader of Gemsigns comes to perceive the gems as a virtuous force, and

morally flawed norms like Zavcka and the godgang members as forces working against the

greater good. Through this narrative strategy, it becomes clear that the more ethical, principled

stance is to side with the oppressed gems rallying for recognition as human equals.

Early in the novel, Saulter shifts the focus of the narrative to a character who is not

merely “a reactor to a reality, the effect of a cause” (2), as Eli is described, to emphasise the

subjective plight of an individual gem: “We might better begin with Gaela Provis Bel’Natur,

struggling with corollaries as she makes her way across the city” (2). Gaela’s “hyperspectral

vision” and “hyperspectral synaesthesia,” abilities that were designed into her biological

makeup, enable her to perform superhuman tasks that replace the need for several specialised

machines that would otherwise be required:

She often wondered what norms - or even other gems - would call her colours, and knew

she would never have the answer. Hyperspectral vision coupled to an unimpaired

intellect was a rarity, and hyperspectral synaesthesia was, as far as she knew, unique.

She could have done without the distinction. She struggled endlessly to describe the

hues no one else could see. (6)

While this ability could at first seem like an advantage—an enhancement that would improve life

significantly—Gaela suffers intensely with migraine headaches that are cripplingly painful: “they

were intense enough to interfere with her carefully modulated perception of her surroundings,

and she stumbled and stopped, eyes half closed” (6). This highlights that while she was

designed to possess extraordinary abilities, the Gemtech corporations were apathetic towards

the many negative side effects of their experimentation. As the narrator explains, “Gaela is the

very embodiment of unintended consequences. It is her boon and her doom, her grace and her

gall. It exhausts her” (2). That Gaela must simultaneously struggle with her physical

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impediments, the severe handicap of inescapable headaches and intense visions that shape

her sensory experience, as well as the fear of physical abuse, suggests the complexity of her

plight—physical, mental, emotional, social and political in nature.

Saulter constructs Aryel as a leader who allows diverse personal voices to form the

fabric of a multifaceted political strategy. Aryel recognises that the Walker Report is key to

transforming public perceptions of the gems so that the norm majority can transition from

viewing the gems as faceless subhuman figures who can be justifiably exploited, to engaging in

more empathetic, humane responses to their injustice and oppression. Aryel’s strategies of

radical inclusion are central to the personal and political landscape of Gemsigns as Saulter

privileges a mode of politics alternative to Zavcka’s authoritarianism. All too aware of the

tendency for the gems to be categorised according to their deviancies and mutations, Aryel

consciously seeks to “counteract the perception of gems as homogenous and simplistic” (75).

Aryel actively encourages all gems, no matter their abilities or social role, to have valid input in

political forums. On “Day Two” (65) of the narrative, when Eli first meets with the gems at the

Squats, he recognises that to fully understand the stance of the gems, Aryel guides him to

genuinely listen to their personal testimony. This meeting establishes the gems as distinctive

individuals, moving beyond the tendency of those in power to homogenise them as a faceless

group of deviant subhumans. This aspect of the novel echoes the sentiments and aspirations of

African American writers both during and after slavery, as a genre of literature emerged that

poignantly captured the thoughts, feelings and experiences of those enslaved. Autobiographical

literature written by women, including Hannah Craft’s mid-nineteenth century novel The

Bondwoman’s Narrative, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and later,

postcolonial fiction such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), underline a key purpose of black

literature in unearthing the stories of the marginalised to put a human face on the often faceless

and silenced colonised Other. In Gemsigns, the value of personal testimony that humanises

individual gems in the eyes of an authority figure who has the power to determine their political

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fate is clearly apparent. The personal stories of the gems elicit sympathy and emotional

understanding of the unique plights of each individual, in a similar way to women’s black

literature that details the horrific realities of sexual, physical and psychological oppression of

slaves under colonial rule through an intensely subjective lens that amplifies experiences of

individual suffering. Eli's fascination with the gems, specifically their ability to display “the

breadth and depth of the permutations the human envelope was capable of” (73) is tempered by

his awareness of the infinite possibilities for differentiation that they represent.

Aryel understands the importance of displaying the heterogeneity of the gems as

distinctive individuals to combat the possibility that they could be viewed in a reductive,

simplistic way: “[Aryel] had clearly decided it was important for him to hear the full range of

views on every issue he raised, and had set herself the task of managing the conversation to

ensure that every split and nuance was on display” (74). Aryel endeavours to actively engage

Wenda in the discussion, exhibiting a considered and sensitive approach. Wenda, a retired

surrogate mother, endured twenty-five years of forced pregnancy and birth to serve the state.

Having limited education and socialisation, Wenda struggles intensely with self-expression and

reconciling years of physical and psychological abuse as a woman commodified for her

reproductive capacity. Aryel deliberately allows Wenda to find expression despite a speech

impediment, shyness and significant difficulty in organising her thoughts. The narration details

Aryel’s deliberate manoeuvring of the conversation to accommodate Wenda’s unique

personality and limitations: “As she grew embarrassed and self-conscious Aryel stepped in,

absorbing the attention while keeping Wenda focused, leading the discussion back to her when

she was ready to have her say” (74). Even though the gems openly contradict each other during

the meeting, Aryel invites their independent opinions on matters concerning the gems. Eli

speculates about Aryel’s underlying motivation in “showing him the range of [the gems]

differences and disagreements” to put “the diversity of the gem community on display,”

considering it to be a potentially “complicated, counterintuitive manoeuvre” (75). He deeply

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considers Aryel’s mode of persuasion and how hearing the different voices of individual gems

functions to influence his own perceptions regarding whether gems should be considered as

worthy of inclusion into human society. In presenting the gems as unique individuals with

distinctive experiences, viewpoints and voices, Saulter’s novel directly challenges toxic cultural

givens that homogenise Othered populations under essentialising ideologies. Instead,

Gemsigns emphasises that the transition to a posthuman society necessitates

acknowledgement of difference as fundamental to what it is to be human.

Wenda’s personal history is recounted via the dialogue between Aryel and Eli in emotive

detail that captures extreme levels of systematic abuse at the hands of gemtechs and cruel

government institutions. For Aryel, the opportunity to give voice to Wenda’s experiences in the

wake of the Declaration heralds the beginnings of the plight of the gems being publicly

acknowledged and the violations to which they were subjected being identified as gross

injustices rather than business as usual: “[Aryel] spoke without anger, the violation quietly

recounted as though to a visitor from a land so foreign they might not comprehend such

barbarity. The compassion in her voice was more searing than a denunciation” (79). For such

individuals, the social and legal changes that the Declaration and Conference can potentially

bring are not merely a function of philosophical and ideological arguments, but rather, their lived

reality as they seek to redefine their status as autonomous subjects rather than commodified

objects whose body parts have been reduced to instruments of a callous capitalist regime. For

gems like Wenda, the quest for emancipation is centered around the aim of reclaiming

possession of their bodies.

The project of resistance in which the gems are engaged echoes the sentiments of Felix

Guattari in Chaosophy, where he gives voice to those who have had their bodies, minds and

identities colonised on the basis of their presumed otherness:

We can no longer allow others to turn our mucous membranes, our skin, all our sensitive

areas, into occupied territory—territory controlled and regimented by others, to which we

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are forbidden access. We can no longer permit our nervous system to serve as a

communications network for the system of capitalist exploitation, for the patriarchal state;

nor can we permit our brains to be used as instruments of torture programmed by the

powers that surround us. (209)

In creating a platform for gems to speak out against the ways in which their bodies have been

commodified and exploited by both government and state powers, Aryel directly challenges

beliefs pertaining to the gems’ inhuman nature. Saulter portrays radical inclusion and the

acceptance of difference as a new mode of politics through the construction of a gem leader

who seeks to showcase the full spectrum of gem abilities, personalities, views, idiosyncrasies

and limitations as a purposeful political strategy.

The posthuman splice as monster: from devil to angel

Christian imagery is central to Gemsigns’ lucid portrait of how grand religious narratives have

historically played a significant role in the vilification or idolisation of particular human/Other

figures. Indeed, the source of the most violent and vehement attitudes projected towards the

gems throughout the novel is a group of fundamentalist Christians. Implicit in this representation

is an allegorical link to the history of Christian beliefs being leveraged by colonial authorities to

justify the enslavement and dispossession of the African people. The malleability of Christian

narratives and iconography is evident in the ways in which they have been appropriated in the

hands of both oppressors and the oppressed. Just as authorities have historically manipulated

religious doctrines to justify their assumed authority of certain populations, oppressed

populations have also discovered empowerment and unity in claiming and adapting Christian

teachings. The rich tradition of African-American people, for example, utilising the institution of

the Christian church and religious beliefs in peace, hope and universal love to inspire political

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and social change attests to opportunities for vastly different interpretations and applications of

the religion. Saulter’s novel depicts how varied interpretations of Christian ideologies and

iconographies have the power to reshape perceptions of the Other. From the viewpoint of the

religious extremists, the hybrid gems are monstrous: evil manifestations of the devil who should

be denied the rights and freedoms afforded to ‘humans.’ Yet, when viewed from through a

different lens, the genetically engineered posthuman can be revered as an angel figure worthy

of praise and worship. As a mirror of the ways in which both oppressors and the oppressed

have adapted Christianity for their own purposes in the real world, Gemsigns reveals the

significant relationship between religion and social perceptions of who counts as human.

Saulter’s deployment of the splice raises discourses of monstrosity directly, portraying

the gems as biological fusions of different species and traits that utterly breach neat categories

of human identity. While Baggott’s Pure portrays wretches whose bodies radically breach

discrete categories of the human in a manner that continues to cast them as monstrous in the

eyes of characters and readers alike, in Gemsigns it is clear that monstrosity is a matter of

perspective. In Monstrosity, Alexa Wright posits that figures that are deemed monstrous are

manifestations “of that which disturbs the social ‘norm,’ or troubles an existing understanding of

what is acceptably human” (2). As posthuman figures that violate the integrity of preexisting

biological and physical boundaries, the gems are perceived as monsters in manifold ways. For

instance, they are cast as morally monstrous by members of the fundamentalist Christian group,

the godgang. These individuals view monstrosity through a flawed lens dictated by a

fundamentalist strand of religion that classifies the norms as human and divine creations of

God, and gems as works of the devil. Posthumans to the godgang are automatically monstrous

in a way that points to their moral deficiency. The godgang members perceive the gems as

bestial and inhuman, magnifying their non-human characteristics to align the gems with

abominations of the devil’s creation. Yasmine Musharbash highlights the threatening status of

monsters in cultures where there are heavily guarded distinctions between human and animal,

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as these figures can: be a fusion of the two categories; transcend either of the categories; or be

considered less than human or animal (9). Gemsigns portrays the social fact that individuals

relegated to nonhuman status on account of their biological deviance can be classified as

monsters, unveiling underlying ideologies that allow humans to socially subordinate the Other.

As Nayar posits, “‘universal’ humanism was ironically… a system of differentiation in which

some forms of the body were treated as ‘human’ and others as ‘non-human,’” suggesting that

due to their inherently threatening nature, societies since the rise of humanism have paid close

attention to “biological mutants and medical anomalies—deemed to be monsters”

(Posthumanism 19). To some members of the norm population, the gems are these kinds of

‘nonhuman’ monsters, genetically engineered to meet the needs of those deemed wholly

human. In the evolving posthuman society of 130AS London, conceptions of what is perceived

as a nonhuman monster are being radically challenged, symbolised in the character arc of Aryel

Morningstar.

Patricia MacCormack’s take on the value of ‘posthuman teratology’ is particularly useful

for considering the intersection of monstrosity and the posthuman in Gemsigns. In her article,

teratology is defined as “the study of monsters and monstrosity in all epistemic incarnations,

though most often in medicine and physiology” (Posthuman Teratology 293). MacCormack

describes the effect of monsters as a combination of “wonder and terror,” which can evoke a

compulsion to cure or redeem the monstrous via fetishization, and a desire to make the

monstrous sacred or engender sympathy towards these figures (Posthuman Teratology 293).

The field of teratology refers to both the study of monstrosity, and the study of biological

anomalies, mutations and deviance. In this regard, it provides a productive lens for

contemplating the ways in which posthuman figures like Aryel can be multiply cast as

monstrous. As human/animal or human/technology splices, and biologically and physiologically

deviant creations, posthuman ‘monsters’ are ambiguous cultural productions. MacCormack

explains: “the hybrid and the ambiguous hold fascination for the non-monster because they

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show the excesses, potentialities, and infinite protean configurations of form and flesh available

in nature even while human sciences see them as unnatural” (Posthuman Teratology 293). If we

consider that “teras means both monster and marvel” (Posthuman Teratology 296), it becomes

clear that what is deemed monstrous is possibly also a source of awe and wonder for humanity.

It is possible that like the monster figure, posthumans can also possess this dual potential to

both terrify and induce marvel. The status of the posthuman as both monster and marvel is

cogently represented in Gemsigns as Aryel ascends from the subordinate position of deformed,

deviant gem to mobilise her true physical form as a hybrid of bird and woman, claiming her role

as an angelic saviour figure in the narrative.

Through Christian allegory that appropriates well-known biblical narratives and

iconographies, Saulter illuminates the relationship between the scientific and spiritual

discourses that reinforce human/Other binaries that classify certain individuals as monstrous.

Saulter does not blur the boundaries of time in the same manner as Winterson in The Stone

Gods, in which past and future overlap and repeat as they often do in postmodern and magical

realism works of fiction. Rather, in Gemsigns the linearity of chronological time becomes less

important than the ways in which narratives of the past and future coalesce to comment on the

potential for histories to repeat themselves, even as they diverge and evolve in response to

societal and technological shifts. The narrative structure of Gemsigns is split into seven days,

mirroring the seven days of creation outlined in the book of Genesis in the Christian Bible, with

the sections numbered from “Day One” (13) through to “Day Seven” (373) leading up to the

Conference and its aftermath. The biblical connotations of this narrative structure are clear,

reflecting God’s creation of the earth and its people over a seven-day period—the construction

of a new world order that accommodates new life forms, heralding a new beginning for

humankind. Saulter’s appropriation of biblical narratives situates her gems as the new form of

humanity being birthed at the inception of a new world, with climactic events that recast the

gems as superhuman rather than subhuman monsters. Gemsigns references Christian

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narratives through symbolic characters who meet familiar archetypes common to religious

stories of creation and the conflict between heaven and hell. Key characters Eli, Gabriel, and

Aryel each possess Hebrew names that carry biblical connotations and strengthen associations

to prophet and archangel archetypes. Inevitably, in using Christian allegory and dramatising the

fanatical perspectives of the godgang, Saulter conveys an attitude resistant to transhumanist

aspirations to irrevocably unite humanity and technology via genetic engineering, questioning

whether those open to manipulating the helix “were in error if they presumed to possess the

authority of God” (62).

The godgang members view the gems as debased and nonhuman, evident in the

associations they draw between the human/animal hybridity and biological impurity of the gems,

and iconographies of the devil. The scathing comments of godgang members provide insight

into the revulsion induced by monsters as they are perceived as symbols of humankind in its

most abject form. The godgang members believe that “all gems are man-made abominations of

nature” (347), dehumanising the gems by amplifying attributes that are antithetical to the

inviolable laws of nature espoused in the Christian bible. The godgang’s dehumanisation of the

gems is also reflected in the associations that godgang member Mac draws between the gems

within the Squats who present the most startling forms of deformity or debilitation: “The

community room [looked] . . . like one of the ancient paintings of a scene from the Pit. These

gems were not like the ones they had caught out on the street, not all of them anyway. These

stared blankly and sat still, or gibbered and screamed and tried to run” (337). This imagery

conjures the iconography of half human/half beast hybrid creatures that feature in depictions of

hell by artists throughout history. In Angels and Demons in Art, Rosa Giorgi details the

consistencies evident in portrayals of demonic figures that feature in representations of hell in

artistic images throughout human history. Giorgi explains that both within the Bible and

representations of the Last Judgement and the Afterworld, Hell is “reserved for the damned . . .

based on the idea of the Final Judgement and a separation of the just from the wicked that had

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begun to spread in the second century B.C.” (28). This ideological notion of inevitable

separation of good and evil as an ultimate goal for humanity reinforces the hierarchical logic that

drives the quest of the fundamentalists in Gemsigns to fulfil their “holy work” (179). Saulter

utilises religious allusion to represent the associations that Mac draws between physical

monstrosity and evil. Mac perceives the gems as manifestations of the devil, demonic in their

hybridity and capable of enacting torture and torment on condemned souls. Artistic

representations such as Jan van Eyck’s The Last Judgement, dated to 1425-30, depict various

demons “rendered as hideous animals that pounce on the damned to quarter and devour them”

(Giorgi 32). Parallels can be drawn between these medieval and renaissance representations

that align animal/human hybridity with malignant forces and the perceptions of Mac, whose

fundamentalist interpretation of Christian narratives produce distorted impressions of the gems

as repellent and fearsome. For example, Mac’s initial impression of Gaela’s appearance, “the

glow from her hair was demonic” (339), immediately aligns her with the same imagery of the

figures who reside in hell to perform the work of the devil. Mac’s perspective attunes him to

observe their aberrant and hybrid forms as demonic and threatening, evidence to him of their

latent potentialities for evil and destruction.

To godgang members, Aryel’s very presence is a potent and terror-inducing force that

threatens the dominant mythologies that have defined humanity as distinct from other worldly

creatures. To Mac, for example, Aryel is perceived as bestial in a way that casts her as demonic

and evil. His metaphor in “the Beast-witch’s poison whisper of an alliance with the very

cultivators of evil” (205) labels Aryel’s discourse with the public as dangerous and toxic, and the

noun “witch” bears associations to the occult to further vilify her as immoral and corrupt. This

sentiment is further echoed in Mac’s conclusion, “Proof, as if any were needed, that the Beast

was insidious, and powerful” (205), which affirms his belief in her duplicitous and malevolent

nature. Mac’s emotionally loaded adjectives reflect his loathing of Aryel on the basis of her

deviance from ‘pure’ boundaries he perceives to have been established by God. In his eyes,

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she is an inhuman “hunchback succubus” (204), aligning her image with the incarnation of evil

as a demonic female figure who is dangerous and malignant in her capacity to seduce mankind.

Representations of the succubus figure that features in folklore belief suggest that it

descended from Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who refused to return to the Garden of Eden after

mating with archangel Samael (Grover, et al. 148). Commonly associated with depictions of the

devil, Lilith is the source of blame for the diseases of man, “wandering about at night time,

vexing the sons of men, and causing them to defile themselves” (Sperling and Simon 82-3). The

succubus has also been described as a hybrid human/animal creature with the human element

taking the form of a beautiful young female, while the animalistic qualities manifest in

deformities like serpent tails and bird-like claws (Davidson 40). Therefore, in labelling Aryel as a

succubus, Mac casts her physical monstrosity as a sign of her moral depravity, characterising

her as a malevolent being, insidious and impure in her intentions to deceive and harm. Her

beauty and natural allure are associated with allusions to erotic sin as a seductive force that

uses lust as a tool to entrap men in their own nightmares of moral debasement. The succubus

image conjures the female iconography of a devilish winged creature, antithetical to the image

of the angel that she appears as later in the narrative. This association foreshadows the

climax’s revelation of Ayrel’s winged form and her transition from devil monster to angel saviour,

while pitting two very different perspectives of the same physical form against each other as the

narrative develops. Readers observe that when the gems are perceived as deviant and

threatening posthuman Others as a consequence of their hybridity, they are characterised as

monsters. This status shifts, however, as attitudes towards the bioengineered posthuman body

evolve and the wider norm society realises that according to long-standing biblical narratives,

certain hybrid human/Other forms have been revered and even worshipped.

Saulter further shapes impressions of posthuman figures as monstrous and deviant by

evoking the iconography of the archangel to characterise Gaela’s adopted son Gabriel as a

saviour figure. Saulter uses Christian allegory to mobilise Gabriel’s character arc, contesting the

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godgang’s perceptions of the gems as monstrous abominations associated with iconographies

of the devil. As Gabriel utilises his telepathy to identify the intrusion of godgang member John

into the Squats, the godgang narrative that casts the gems as demonic beings is overshadowed

by an alternative biblical narrative that strengthens their association with heavenly beings. The

name, Gabriel bears Christian significance alluding to the Archangel Gabriel and carries the

meaning, ‘Messenger of God.’ In the Book of Daniel, Gabriel is a revealer, responsible for

interpreting Daniel’s visions and possessing the ability to foretell, capable of prophesying about

the future. Richard Webster discusses the meaning of the name Gabriel, which translates to

“God is my strength” (1), and explains that from a traditional Christian perspective, “Gabriel is

considered the archangel of dreams, premonitions, and clairvoyance” (3). These religious

associations are strengthened for the reader via literary allusion, as clear parallels can be drawn

between John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the Archangel Gabriel features in Book IV, and

Saulter’s reimagining of the Gabriel figure, with both characters possessing the ability to expose

deception and extricate forces of evil from a protected inner sanctum. In Milton’s epic poem,

Archangel Gabriel is a guardian of the Garden of Eden and is charged with the duty of

protecting the sanctuary from malevolent invaders: “Gabriel, to thee thy course by Lot hath

giv'n/ charge and strict watch that to this happie place/ no evil thing approach or enter in” (Book

IV, lines 561-563). In Gemsigns, Gabriel is characterised as a child of both innocence and

knowledge as he has been sheltered from the harsh truths of injustice and violence that

characterise the society outside of the Squats, yet his telepathic abilities grant him the power to

guard and protect the gems’ inner sanctum.

Just as Milton’s Satan infiltrates the divinely protected bounds of the Garden, the

godgang member John deceptively enters the Squats disguised as a pro-gem UC church group

member, who are ordinarily strong allies of the gem community. Like many of the character

names in the novel, the name “John” also carries significant biblical connotations, derived from

a common Hebrew name meaning “God has been gracious” and historically linked to John the

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Apostle, one of Jesus of Nazareth’s disciples—although there are four people named John in

the New Testament (Culpepper 7). Just as Satan observes the various different animals within

the Garden of Eden, John also observes the different variations of the gems and is horrified

when they present themselves with confidence rather than shame. Satan is intent on the

destruction of Adam and Eve living within the Garden of Eden, as is John. In Paradise Lost, it is

the Archangel Gabriel who identifies Satan in the guise of a toad whispering into Eve’s ear while

she sleeps. Satan proclaims his innocence but Gabriel exposes Satan’s deception: “To whom

the warriour Angel, soon repli'd./ To say and strait unsay, pretending first/ wise to flie pain,

professing next the Spie,/ argues no Leader, but a lyar trac't,/ Satan, and couldst thou faithful

add?” (Book IV, lines 946-950). Similarly, on “Day Five” (253) in Gemsigns, it is Saulter’s

Gabriel who uses his telepathic abilities to penetrate John's mind and unveil his sinister

intentions to harm the gems as part of a wider godgang plot to bring about their ruin, exclaiming

“You’re a liar!... You killed Nelson! You and someone named Simon and someone named Mac!

You keep thinking about it!” (283). This is a climactic moment where the child’s powers become

public knowledge and he is cast as “a special child, a blessed child” (281). Through Gabriel’s

revelations, the gems are able to extricate John from the Squats and foil his insidious plans, a

parallel with Satan’s confrontation with Archangel Gabriel in Milton’s work that was the catalyst

for the forces of evil to retreat back to Hell. The garden on the rooftop of the Squats to which

Gabriel tends with his adoptive father, Bal, also strengthens the association between the Squats

and the biblical Garden of Eden, a place of sanctuary and protection in which the gems can

regroup and reenter the world on their own terms.

These resonances recast the gems and their residence in the Squats as aligned with

forces of truth and moral goodness, rather than being the monstrous demons perceived by the

godgangs. Through this religious allegory, Saulter portrays the ideological grounds upon which

anti-gem proponents continue to condemn and dehumanise the gems to reinforce their inferior

status. Gabriel’s extraordinary ability to identify and extricate the true source of malevolence

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foreshadows the revelation that he is in fact a norm with superhuman capabilities. This

discovery is crucial to reshaping perceptions of the norm population as unmodified, ‘natural’

humans that heavily contrast the hyper-engineered biological state of the gems. As the truth

emerges that the norms have been subjected to similar levels of biological engineering as their

gem counterparts, the perceived genetic differences between the two groups can no longer be

seized by authorities as a justification for their ongoing subordination.

Tracing Aryel’s character arc as she transitions from the position of deviant monster to

the ascendant iconography of the angel further provides insight into how dominant social

attitudes within the world of the novel influence treatment of its posthuman spliced figures. The

novel points to the necessity of exposing and challenging ideologies that define certain

individuals as physically monstrous, by drawing attention to the flawed and reductive nature of

the hierarchical logic that governs London’s social structure. When Saulter first introduces Aryel

into the narrative, it is evident that Aryel’s physical deformities overshadow her other qualities in

the eyes of most norms. For example, before Eli has met Aryel, he questions the wisdom of

having her represent the gems at the upcoming conference, believing that her evident physical

aberrations mark her as unique and alien even in comparison to other gems. Eli reveals this in

conversation with Rob Trench as he expresses his confusion: “‘I was surprised by their choice

of representative. I thought it would be someone with a familiar ability, or at least a less

obvious…’ he trailed off, feeling awkward and guilty” (37). This leaves Rob to identify the

inference of ‘disability,’ revealing that Eli initially judges Aryel on her physical appearance as

diminutive and disabled, admitting that since the Syndrome, society has become far less

accustomed to weakness and illness (37). Rob brushes aside such concerns with the

unequivocal statement, “Aryel Morningstar is extraordinary” (37), reframing her anomalousness

in a positive light. The connotation of the adjective ‘extraordinary’ places emphasis on the

remarkable attributes of intelligence and wisdom and that mark Aryel as exceptional and

phenomenal rather than deviant.

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Aryel’s beauty and deformity are also perceived as paradoxical to some members of

norm society. Through Aryel’s character arc, Gemsigns illustrates that while monster figures can

embody paradoxes, anomalies and incongruencies—elements that should not be

simultaneously contained within the one body—posthuman figures can symbolically challenge

perceptions of excess, aberration, deformity and deviancy as monstrous. MacCormack states

that the posthuman permits “access to and celebrates the excesses, conundrums, jubilant

failures, and disruptive events which are already inherent in any possibility of contemplation”

(Posthuman Teratology 295). Aryel functions as this form of monster at certain junctures within

the novel, when her evident feminine beauty meets human ideals, yet conflicts dramatically with

her apparent monstrosity. The emotional response this evokes in norms is a mix of confusion,

admiration, pity, sympathy, awe and revulsion. Eli’s first observations of Aryel are indicative of

his instinctual response to her physical abnormalities:

She bore a lump on her back wider than her shoulders, a triangular swelling that

appeared to start at the nape of the neck and carry on down the length of her torso. She

stood straight and appeared to carry it easily enough, but he shuddered inside at the

thought of the extra weight on her diminutive frame, the pain she must suffer if it really

was made up of embedded hardware. (71)

Eli’s sympathy towards Aryel’s limitations and the suffering that her distorted form would induce

reflects his compassion for the struggles of the gems, expressing an attitude of curiosity and

empathy rather than disgust or repulsion. The conflict between Aryel’s diminutive frame and the

“voluminous” expanse of the cloak that conceals her distinctive gemsign also evokes a

paradoxical response of sympathy for her assumed physical frailty, and shock at the sheer

weight of the bulk she carries on her shoulders. This bulk proves metaphorical as the narrative

develops and it becomes apparent that Aryel bears the burden of instigating ideological and

political change. As a Christ figure who comes to sacrifice her own needs and desires for the

benefit of her people, Aryel’s embodiment in some scenes evokes the iconography of Jesus

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weighed down by the burden of carrying the crucifix on his shoulders. While Eli’s observations

are presented as more neutral and objective in comparison to those of other norms, he still

considers the shape of her physical form in terms of deviance, describing the secret of Aryel’s

“true size and shape” as a “grotesquerie” (71). Eli’s initial perception of Aryel’s beauty and

deformity is that they are at odds. The concept that an individual can present so many physical

signs of disability and deformity as well as signs of beauty seems to be paradoxical to him, and

indeed the norm majority. This is reflected in his response to Aryel’s voice: “Her voice was low

and beautifully modulated, almost musical. It sounded strange coming from so small and

misshapen a body” (71). The incongruence of Aryel’s traits is also captured in Eli’s oxymoronic

adjectives that describe her as a “magnetic, malformed woman” (81), a description indicative of

her capacity to allure rather than repel despite her physical aberrations. Here, the posthuman

figure becomes a site for unsettling and reshaping conventional ideals associated with beauty.

As a posthuman splice, Aryel’s incongruent human/monster form makes her a disarming

presence. Eli’s reflection during a conversation with Donal illuminates his realisation:

It’s a difficult thing to measure, but everything I know, as a scientist and as a man, tells

me Aryel shouldn’t be beautiful. She just shouldn’t. In fact she should be repellent. She’s

so tiny and her gemsign — whatever it is — is so huge, so warped, it should more than

offset her face and her voice and all the rest of it. But it doesn’t. She’s lovely.’ He

shrugged, perplexed. ‘Why is she lovely, Donal? How does she do it?’ (218)

In such ruminations, Aryel’s posthuman body functions as a site of contestation as she

threatens the myths of human exceptionalism and ideals of beauty, becoming the kind of

enigmatic presence that at times invites awe and admiration. So while her monstrosity is

unsettling and casts her as ambiguous, incongruent or an ‘impossible being,’ her beauty is

magnified by her aberrations rather than diminished. To some norms, like John and Mac, Aryel

is the monster they seek to disassociate from or evade; for others, like Eli and the norm public,

she becomes the marvel after the revelation of her wings—the wondrous source of awe that

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delimits the realms of possibility in emancipatory ways. However positive this ideological

position might seem, it does not take away from Aryel’s disenfranchised status in social and

political terms. For the gems, symbolic potential only carries the hint of hope for ideological

shifts that may not translate into real social and political change. Monstrosity remains a double-

edged sword as the wonder and awe evoked by being classed as a marvel does not preclude

such individuals from marginalisation, objectification and social scrutiny. It is not until later in the

novel that Aryel chooses to mobilise her status as a marvel that she is able to rewrite the

associations between physical and biological deviance and monstrosity, and recast the gems as

a community of people with superhuman rather than subhuman potential.

Saulter characterises Aryel’s uniqueness as simultaneously prodigious and spectacular,

given that her concealed gemsign is actually a physical feature that imbues her with ethereal,

superhuman qualities—a pair of wings that grant her the ability to fly like a bird. This reality is

not revealed until the climax of the novel, when Aryel is forced into a situation that necessitates

her public unveiling. A crisis occurs at the denouement of the novel on a day of religious

significance, Christmas Day, when godgang members kidnap Gabriel with the intention of

publicly murdering him. The religious iconography reaches a pitch when Aryel has no choice but

to utilise her superhuman traits to rescue the child, launching from a tower rooftop with Gabriel

in her arms and using her wings to fly him to safety. This climactic moment is described in rich

detail, as Saulter writes: “the impossible limbs sweeping up above her shoulders, a flash of

creamy down underside, bronze-bright flight feathers drawn sharp against a searing blue sky.

Her third step drove her up, into the breach and the clear air. She spread her wings, and

jumped” (366). The adjective “impossible” to describe her wings is indicative of the reactions of

all onlookers who perceive her hybrid bird/human body to defy reasonable biological and

physical bounds. This is echoed in the metaphorical reference to her transcendence of

entrenched barriers: “The notion was archaic and impossible, ‘She’s— She’s a—’ But still it

presented itself, rising phoenix-like, rampant now and sweeping up and over the barriers of

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history and logic” (368). This captures the moment of “rippling, reverent astonishment” (367) as

audiences register the existence of Aryel’s previously inconceivable hybrid form. The stunning

image of Aryel as a phoenix rising aligns her posthuman winged body with classic mythologies

that elevate her social status. She is no longer perceived as grounded in the corporeal, material

realm of the scientifically manipulated biological body. Rather, Aryel is perceived as an

otherworldly being whose physical form and genetic makeup transcend boundaries of scientific

rationality familiar to the norm population. That perceptions of Aryel are so radically altered once

the truth of her wings and flying ability are unveiled reflects the role that Christian beliefs play in

shaping attitudes towards what counts as human, what is deemed monstrous, and what is

perceived as a divine form of the supernatural within the world of the novel. Returning to

MacCormack’s discussion of posthuman teratology, it is clear that the novel’s climax presents

the transition from monster to marvel as Aryel’s monstrosity is recast as awe-inspiring.

Saulter crafts an image of Aryel as ethereal as she takes flight from the rooftop of a

building in rescue of Gabriel, writing, “there seemed to be nothing but sky behind her, arcing up

into the infinity above their heads, an azure amphitheatre fit only for the gods” (365). Here, the

deviant posthuman genetically engineered body has merged with another form of spliced

animal/human form that carries transcendent connotations rather than associations with

debasement and monstrosity. In this image of transcendence, Aryel becomes affiliated with

iconographies of the angel figure instead of the depraved succubus, symbolic of the potential for

the gems to transcend their collective state of subjection. This is reflected in the symbolism of

light and gold, “her wings were still half open, sunlight glinting off soft bronze feathers limned in

gold. Her eyes were the colour of sky” (369). After the truth of Aryel’s hybridity is unveiled, her

deviant body is no longer deemed a monstrous anomaly. The system of knowledge production

that imbues Aryel and other gems with a subordinate and limited social status is governed by

the belief that those with aberrant and deviant bodies can be disentitled to social privileges of

justice and equality. This is the same system that alternatively marks Aryel as more entitled to

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enfranchisement once her biological body has been reassessed as biologically aligned with an

acceptable form of deviant embodiment.

Although Aryel is initially perceived by many norms as a posthuman monster due to her

physical deformity, the potential of her power as both a persuasive and influential political

leader, and an iconic symbol of hope is foreshadowed throughout the novel. Aryel purposefully

conceals the secret of her embodiment as a hybrid of woman and bird from the public, refusing

to mobilise the iconography of the angel to further the cause of the gems. She is highly aware

that the revelation of her wings could cast her, as eventually occurs in the novel, as an angelic

saviour figure. As a perceptibly deformed, disabled form of posthuman being rather than an

angelic saviour figure, Aryel operates from a far different position where her intelligence and

rhetorical ability are not yet overshadowed by the spectacle of her hybrid bird/woman angel

form. She has hoped that the gems could find empowerment on their own terms, without the

need for her glorified ascension to superhuman status to elevate them. Aryel prefers that the

gems be perceived as human rather than associating them with enduring mythologies that align

human/animal hybrids with superhuman status. However, as a hybrid of bird and woman,

Aryel's functional and powerful body enables the norm population to embrace her superhuman

status as an angel figure. In this context, it seems to be the dysfunctional, grotesque hybrid

body that incites fear, anxiety and the need for scrutiny and control—bodies that do not fit neatly

into the bounds of explainable, known and definable phenomena. Even though Aryel’s body

deviates from conventional norms of embodiment, its unique function and traits can be

explained by known mythologies—enough for suspicion to transmute into awe as the truth of

her hybrid body is revealed to the public. The dual perspectives of Aryel’s winged embodiment,

and indeed Aryel’s own ambivalence about revealing her true nature, point to the doubleness of

Christianity, in the sense that its religious narratives have sometimes historically been seized on

by oppressors to incite fear of the Other, while they have also been grasped by oppressed

populations as a source of inspiration and liberation.

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Rob expresses the shared experience of witnessing an event that induced a mix of

“horror and revelation and sheer, gut-swooping wonder” (389), as social attitudes towards the

posthuman hybrid figure have shifted from derision to awe. However, Mikal possesses doubts

about the political potential of such awe and wonder being able to action the kinds of societal

change that would be truly beneficial to the gems, expressing the crucial message, “love lies

less in awe than in acceptance... Though neither is all that one might hope for” (389). Saulter,

therefore, concludes the novel with the message that the shift from being perceived as a

monstrous, deviant underclass towards wonder and veneration is merely the first step in the

process of moving towards real equality and inclusion. For gems to achieve social acceptance,

all factions of the 130AS London society must continue to work towards strengthening attitudes

of mutual respect and understanding towards difference.

Crucial to the social project of reaching enhanced mutual understanding is raising

awareness of the patterns of variance that also characterise the dominant human group. Eli’s

research findings present a valid argument that the variances in norm human forms, features

and behaviours are just as numerous and complex as those of the gems. This directly

challenges the assumption that being a member of the human population provides assurance of

predictable biology, features and behaviours that conform to the model of a proto-typical human

being. The Walker Report affirms that this is a flawed assumption. As Eli indicates, human

behaviour is inherently unpredictable, and often hostile to social laws. Human form is equally

unpredictable, given that biological and physiological anomalies can produce features that

seemingly violate natural laws. The question that Eli aimed to answer was therefore not what

gem behaviours were variant, but what variations could be purely the result of genetic

engineering and whether the behaviour fell outside of the normal human range (172).

Consideration of what constitutes ‘normal’ human behaviour became a focus of the study,

alongside which differences would be solely attributed to a particular engineered genetype, and

which were due to circumstances (173). A crucial factor in determining what social behaviours

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could be regarded as normal was the reality that what “we think of as ‘normal’ changes across

cultures and over time” and that “in most places, and in most times, ‘normal’ has described the

ethnicity, heritage and habits of powerful elites or demographic majorities” (289-290). In this

way, Saulter draws a clear parallel between the historical influence of cultural and racial norms

on determining deviancy, and the judgements applied to and treatment of genetically

engineered humans.

In the Walker Report, Eli argues that the monstrous violence of one gem, demonstrated

in a video provided by Zavcka, is not a testament to the behavioural deviance of all gems from

human norms:

While the assault constitutes a horrific aberration from what would have been considered

acceptable in almost any culture at any point in time, it is by no means a unique event in

the history of the human species. Such crimes, while thankfully always rare, were well

known and documented in the centuries prior to the Syndrome. (291)

A crucial element of Eli’s argument lies in his refutation of the link between the violent actions of

the gem and genetics; he argues that violence in gems is less likely the result of “an array that

had been engineered in than of a heritage sequence that has never been engineered out” (292).

With this argument, Eli asserts that the gems’ capacity for extreme violence is “in no essential

respect any different from the potential that may exist within each and every one of us” (292),

and that if anything, the capacity for violence is the consequence of their humanness rather than

the fact that they are a gem. The novel itself demonstrates this through graphic depictions of

brutal attacks on gems, Callan and Nelson, at the hands of violent norms.

To further support his findings, Eli points out that in response to the Syndrome, the

human norm population was also genetically engineered to eliminate particular characteristics

that predisposed them to illness and disease, effectively making the population ‘Syndrome

proof.’ In this regard, the deviancies that many norms regard as so monstrous in the gems are

actually a product of their humanness—aspects of their humanity that were not extricated from

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their genetic profile. This further bridges the gap between gems and norms, as Eli proclaims,

“We are all gems. Engineered characteristics aside, many of the illnesses and aberrations which

we (and they) find so deviant and distressing are exclusively present in them only because they

were engineered out of us” (293). The challenge this presents to the notion that genetic

deviancy from accepted norms should be used as a classifying tool for assigning human and

nonhuman status—or norm and freak status—is crucial to broadening definitions of what

constitutes humanness in Saulter’s fictional society. If historically, human genetics has, without

scientific intervention, produced a range of biological anomalies that couple prodigious talents

with severe limitations, then the argument stands that the gems “represent the continuation of a

truly human legacy” (293). Eli’s argument that a “continuum of incremental variation” made up of

“almost infinite combinations of genetically encoded benefits and disadvantages'' (293), has

always characterised humanity directly challenges the assumption that genetic variance is a

fresh phenomenon. The Walker Report’s conclusion, “that any subdivision, any implicit and

automatic categorisation of gems by ability or disability, would be scientifically spurious” (293),

collapses the boundaries between the two groups on scientific bases.

The underlying message that arises out of Eli’s findings is that despite the inherent

biological and physical differences that separate norms and gems, recognition of their common

humanity and likenesses create fresh space for renegotiating definitions of citizenship. The

Walker Report’s central message that “any segregation or discrimination would be genetically

unfounded” (281), is supported by the argument that the differences between the gems and

norms are no greater than the differences between different racial and cultural groups of

humans. Eli’s argument that difference has historically characterised what it is to be human is

poignantly pronounced:

I expect to hear the cry But they’re different! rising from many thousand throats when

this report is made public. To which I can only reply: Yes they are. They are as different

from us as the European conquistadores from the Aztec agriculturalists. They are as

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different as the Pygmy tribes of sub-Saharan Africa from the dynasties of Tang and

Ming. They are as different as the Romanian orphans of the Cold War from the

intellectual elite of the Ivy League. They are as different as the Indians of the American

plains, in their homes of hide and bark, from those of the Asian sub-continent, in

glittering and bejewelled palaces. They are as different as that. (294)

Eli’s persuasive rhetoric is characterised by anaphoric reiteration of the various differences that

mark human cultures as distinct from one another. Here he lucidly underscores the cultural

nuances that render human groups across differing historical and geographic boundaries as

dramatically contrasting in their appearance, lifestyles and belief systems. Further, Eli

challenges ideologies that magnify racial differences to advantage the dominant population. The

first pairing of “the European conquistadores” and “the Aztec agriculturalists” directly alludes to

discourses of colonial conquest, pitting colonisers against the colonised to underscore that

these two groups were indeed no different from one another. In doing so, Eli—and Saulter—

break down the boundaries that segregate gems and norms into their respective categories of

human and nonhuman Other. Eli illustrates that biological and embodied differences are just as

characteristic to humanity, undermining the ideological assumptions that justify difference as a

grounds for the continued exploitation and subjection of the gems. The resounding outcome of

the report validates the posthuman claim that all citizens of 130AS London are already hybrid,

spliced beings in their multiplicity of affiliations with other species, races, organisms and

nonhuman forms that construct complex biologies and identities. The irony implicit in Eli’s

conclusion resides in the reality that the gems were discovered to be just as human as the norm

majority. Indeed, the genetically engineered state of the norms classifies them as just as

posthuman as the gems. The ideological argument that biological difference can be called upon

to reinforce the boundaries between human and Other is systematically deconstructed by Eli’s

findings. In constructing a society in which the two human populations inevitably turn out to be

biologically engineered posthumans, Saulter exposes the fallacy that hierarchical social

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structures can be solidified on the grounds of racial, cultural or biological difference. In this way,

Gemsigns destabilises foundational humanist notions of difference that have served those in

power in their project of categorising certain groups as subhuman or nonhuman, making way for

a fresh ideological paradigm that emphasises commonalities and affinities as a cornerstone for

constructing a more just and equal society.

Conclusion

Gemsigns provides a powerful parallel between a vividly imagined posthuman condition and

outmoded, though ongoing, systems of social and racial subjugation. Science fiction that

focuses on posthuman concerns often speculates about distant futures involving the merging of

humanity and technology, critiquing the ethics of our current scientific practices in light of their

dangerous potential trajectories. Saulter explores this premise, expressing concerns over

humankind’s increasing dependency on information and communication technologies. However,

while the narrative’s timeline places the citizens of 130AS in a future London distant to our own,

Gemsigns is primarily a novel that critiques our past and current practices of systematic

oppression and commodification of fellow humans. Saulter draws undeniable parallels between

histories of colonial conquest and the subjugation of the posthuman gems, as well as the

intersection between the monstrous depiction of the gems and centuries old religious narratives.

In doing so, she examines the potential for genetic engineering technologies to permit the

creation of new forms of embodied deviance, and explores how similar patterns of ideological

and systemic oppression can be applied to racialised, posthuman or monstrous Others in

present and future realities.

Saulter’s fictional invention of a population of spliced individuals fighting for recognition

as human beings challenges ideological frameworks grounded in the perverse misconception of

the assumed biological, racial or cultural superiority of one group over another. In the collision of

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the voices of the oppressors and the oppressed, Saulter undermines the logic of paternalistic

and racist systems of social control. In constructing clear analogies to racial difference, she

invites recognition and condemnation of hierarchical social systems that reject rather than

embrace embodied difference. Saulter particularly condemns ideologies and systems that

permit authorities to inhibit certain groups from exercising autonomy to determine their own

social purpose, on their own terms. At the same time, however, Gemsigns illustrates that for the

gems the pathway from being regarded as subhuman property to being perceived as

autonomous human beings worthy of choice and freedom is fraught with struggle. Inevitably,

individuals must contest deeply entrenched prejudices and negotiate their way out of an

economy of difference in which those in power benefit from their subjugation.

Gemsigns sheds light on the ideological patterns of dehumanisation that strip certain

groups of their subjectivity and humanity. We see the emotional and psychological

consequences of this played out in starkly human terms throughout the novel. Through the

figure of the posthuman splice, Saulter illustrates how scientific classification can be utilised to

form and maintain systems of social control, while portraying knowledge and data as potentially

dangerous entities when they are used in service of oppressing a certain population. In

portraying the corrupt machinations of the gemtech corporations, Saulter draws awareness to

the ways in which scientific classification can also be utilised to construct biological and racial

differences and justify strict measures of control over those deemed deviant. The novel depicts

problematic corporate agendas that become threatening when life forms are reduced to

commodities or products that can be exploited in service of profit. It is patent in the world of

Gemsigns that when corporations can profit from the enslavement or exploitation of a living

commodity, it pays to dehumanise the people concerned and restrict the rights and freedoms to

which they are entitled. The less humanity with which these living beings can be imbued, the

less freedoms with which they can be bestowed.

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As posthuman fiction, Gemsigns showcases the heterogeneity of an Othered group to

emphasise the subjectivity of individuals who have been objectified and dehumanised. Rather

than emphasising the subjective experiences of one individual protagonist, Saulter provides

insight into the complexities of experience unique to multiple gem individuals. This narrative

choice to portray the multi-dimensionality of an Othered group distinguishes Gemsigns as a

science-fiction novel interested in validating the voices and identities of the marginalised,

providing a trenchant critique of the ways embodied difference is deployed in socially

categorising individuals and groups for political purposes. Saulter seeks to expose the flawed

logic of grounding the construction of societal systems in politics of the body. Gemsigns

establishes firm relationships between the narratives that shape perceptions of human identity

and the rendering of certain people as monstrous, deviant or subhuman. Likewise, the novel

illustrates that the same narratives serve to position individuals as superior, pure or

superhuman, depending on the lens through which they are viewed.

Characters such as Aryel and Eli represent a new brand of politics that privileges

practices of radical inclusion of difference rather than repression and exclusion of those who do

not meet social ideals of ‘normality.’ As the narrative unfolds, the concept of difference is

redefined, shifting away from its ideological association with deviance to recast difference as a

form of multiplicity that invites complexity, wonder and abundance into perceptions of human

identity. Saulter depicts a society in which radical inclusion and acceptance of difference is at

the heart of the new mode of politics, strengthening this notion within Gemsigns by framing

difference as both a matter of perception and genetics. In magnifying the various ideological

hurdles faced by the gems as a core aspect of the politics at play in the novel, Saulter suggests

that meaningful change in the movement towards accepting difference and recognising the

suffering of Othered beings is as much the product of widespread attitudinal change as it is

political reform. As Aryel ascends into the sky as a winged woman—an animal/human hybrid, a

figure of beauty and reverence, and a superhuman being capable of transcending the corporeal

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human body—Saulter offers a posthuman symbol of the potential for monstrous figures to

contest their position as subhuman. The use of Christian iconography throughout Gemsigns, as

perceptions of Aryel transition from deformed hunchback/succubus to the angelic saviour figure,

illustrates that what is perceived as monstrous in Saulter’s imagined society is shaped by the

dominant narratives that dictate definitions of the human.

Ultimately, Saulter’s novel indicates the need to be vigilantly aware of the inadvertent

effects of the choices we make, particularly as scientific choices devoid of ethical considerations

can produce unknowable changes to what it means to be human in a posthuman world. This

message is evident from the outset of Gemsigns in the metaphors of subtle movements that

have significant ramifications, “a mere tilt of the head, a sideways step — and history unspools”

(1). Saulter represents a world in which seemingly minuscule shifts or interventions in natural

human processes have irrevocably and dramatically altered history. From this view, it is

possible to recognise that pinpoints in time are formative for both human culture and the

trajectory of human development, bearing the potential to alter what it means to be human.

Saulter offers this lens to challenge perceptions of human identity as concrete and fixed,

suggesting an alternative approach that reflects its malleable nature. Gemsigns advocates for a

view that promotes flexibility and revision in terms of how varying identities are perceived,

affirming that stifling ideologies that render Othered beings as monstrous or deviant can be

openly resisted. In doing so, Gemsigns portrays a far more inclusive mode of politics that invites

acceptance of Othered beings by recognising their status as social equals worthy of autonomy

and liberty. Saulter creates a fictional space to depict minorities negotiating for freedom within

an oppressive body politic, creating a posthuman world that encourages readers to recognise

that symbolic and ideological change only go so far towards catalysing meaningful and tangible

political change.

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CHAPTER 5

Posthuman Landscapes, Bodies and Relationships in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

As contemporary women’s science fiction, Jeanette Winterson’s 2007 novel The Stone Gods is

as much about what it means to be human as it is about what it means to be non-human. This

chapter shifts from examining Gemsigns’ use of the splice as a productive trope for exploring

the politics of racial Othering, to discuss Winterson’s distinctively experimental, postmodern

form of science fiction. Winterson’s novel contributes complex ideas to ongoing conversations

about the history of human/robot relations as imagined by women in science fiction narratives.

Thea von Harbou’s 1925 novel Metropolis, which was adapted into Fritz Lang’s film of the same

name, uses the relationship between Freder and Maria to explore how differences between real

and artificial, human and machine, influence class politics in a rigidly tiered society divided into

ruling and working classes. In Metropolis, determining the difference between the real Maria and

the robot Maria, even though the two appear identical on the surface, is crucial to entire

populations of people escaping enslavement and obtaining freedom. While von Harbou’s novel

employs the science fiction trope of the destructive robot controlled by a malevolent authority to

expose the potential dangers of Marxist politics, Winterson self-reflexively toys with conventional

tropes like the cyborg and artificial intelligence to explore the historical dominance of human

over Other as imagined by women. To further complicate Winterson’s project, as a ‘love story,’

The Stone Gods also portrays the potential for union between human and machine, if the

differences between the two identities no longer stand as an ontological barrier of division. As

revealed in novels like Tanith Lee’s 1981 The Silver Metallic Lover, and later, Cassandra Rose

Clarke’s The Mad Scientist’s Daughter (2013) and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

(2014) by Becky Chambers, female science fiction authors portray intimate human/machine

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relationships that explore the possibility for love between human and Other in ways that point to

transcendence of biological difference as a catalyst for personal and social division.

Like The Stone Gods, the young adult novels discussed in Chapter 1 and 2, Meyer’s

Cinder and Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox, also feature female cyborgs; however, in

these narratives the focus is primarily on how the adolescent protagonists negotiate the

construction of their own identities as partly human/partly machine. In Winterson’s novel, the

ontological questions move from self-focused quandaries like ‘should I exist?’ and if so, ‘under

what definitions?’ into the more complex political territory of ‘how can human/machine

relationships redefine historical patterns of patriarchal dominance?’ The Stone Gods depicts the

dominance of man over nature, women and machine Others through significant temporal shifts,

embedded narratives and ambiguous character identities that purposefully emphasise patterns

of violence and destruction. While Saulter’s Gemsigns mobilised the splice to critique the

patterns of oppression and abuse of minority groups in western culture, in Winterson’s novel

patterns of oppression, manipulation or exploitation of the Other are insidiously embedded into

the patriarchal and often capitalist cultures of the different societies depicted. In this sense,

Winterson’s novel is less pointed than Saulter’s in its indictment of a particular form of political

ideology or system, functioning more broadly as a critique of mankind’s tendency throughout

history to repeatedly consume and destroy all that can be conceivably Othered.

In this chapter, I argue that Winterson presents a distinctly pessimistic take on the

posthuman tendency to distort human bodies and relationships in ways detrimental to moral and

ethical boundaries. However, while Winterson uses dystopian conventions to expose the

negative consequences of seizing technology to enact unchecked desires, she also presents a

more hopeful vision of artificial intelligence as a means of overcoming humanity’s irrational

propensity towards self-destruction. I argue that although this can be interpreted as an optimistic

element of her novel, it supports the narrative’s predominantly cynical view that the only way out

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of imminent self-destruction for humanity lies in technological means of resolving cycles of

conflict, as humans remain incapable of learning from mistakes of the past.

Before zeroing in on the specifics of the novel’s treatment of posthuman embodiment

and ontologies, it is valuable to consider the work in its completeness. Typical of Winterson’s

postmodern style of fiction, it eschews linearity and univocality. The four sections of Winterson’s

novel, ‘Planet Blue,’ ‘Easter Island,’ ‘Post-3 War,’ and ‘Wreck City,’ fragment the narrative in

ways that invite the reader to make connections between characters, concepts and structural

elements. As the novel progresses, these connections become increasingly apparent and serve

to foreground the core thematic resonances that drive Winterson’s critique of humanity’s

posthuman trajectory. The focus of my discussion is predominantly on the first section, ‘Planet

Blue,’ which is set in the distant past, although the reader’s first impression is of a dystopian

future earth. The human inhabitants of Planet Orbus have become consumed by rampant

consumerism and scientific advancement at the expense of the environment and morality. The

people are obsessed with leveraging aesthetic technologies to perfect their appearance,

celebrity culture is rife, and age reversal technologies have driven the desire for youthfulness to

absurdly hyperbolised extremes.

In this chapter I start by analysing The Stone Gods as environmental science fiction, in

light of recent research on the Anthropocene as a distinct epoch during which humanity has had

the most significant impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. I contend that the ‘Planet Blue’ section of

the novel in particular reflects and at times even theorises the cycles of paternalistic destruction

driven by ideologies oppositional to an ecocritical lens. In ‘Planet Blue’ the degradation of the

environment as a consequence of humanity’s relentless patterns of consumption is a key

concern, representing the pitfalls of civilisation as citizens become accustomed to cosmopolitan

lifestyles that disrupt connections to nature. In the ‘Easter Island’ section of the novel, set in

eighteenth-century Easter Island, Winterson highlights how religious dogma is used to justify

destruction in the primitive world. She depicts a primitive society engaged in similar cycles of

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consuming and destroying natural resources as those occurring on Planet Orbus, although the

island’s inhabitants are driven by religion rather than consumerist ideologies. Meanwhile, in the

‘Planet Blue’ and ‘Post-3 War’ sections, satirically portrayed neoliberal capitalism provides a

similar platform for destruction in the futuristic, dystopian worlds of the novel. Winterson’s

dystopian fiction interrogates the human impulse to destroy natural environments, which are

subordinated to cultural beliefs about technological progress. This is most pronounced in ‘Wreck

City,’ in which Winterson creates classic urban dystopian images to portray a toxic post-

apocalyptic wasteland, decimated by nuclear war—a stark worst-case scenario of humanity’s

destructive tendencies. I consider Winterson’s purposeful construction of interwoven narratives

that juxtapose ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’ human societies of the past and future while pointing to

the shared propensity for humans to opt for conquest and destruction rather than preservation

across diverse contexts.

I then turn to Winterson’s portrayal of posthuman politics as they relate to the body and

human relationships. I examine key passages that portray posthuman politics of the human

body in a dystopian climate that condones and endorses ethically questionable tampering with

natural biological boundaries. The ramifications of such experimentation are represented as

inherently negative in The Stone Gods, perceptibly corrupting to human sexuality and moral

borderlines that have long policed socially acceptable relationships. I explore the implications of

Winterson’s depiction of biotechnologies that interfere with natural ageing processes and

position ageing as a curable phenomenon. In this context, the novel frames ageing as

abhorrent, as individuals are socially compelled to adopt technological means of intervention,

submitting to ideals that align youthfulness and flawless beauty with social and sexual success.

In ‘Planet Blue,’ Winterson depicts technologies utilised for the gratification of perverse male

desires, and of the mass exploitation of women and children within a patriarchal economy,

which present the potentialities of humanity’s posthuman trajectory as alarming. A core focus of

my analysis of posthuman relationships in The Stone Gods is Winterson’s treatment of

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relationship boundaries between adults and children that are violated without ethical or moral

regard.

In my third section on the relationship between humanity and technology, I canvass the

narrative moments in which Winterson collapses the boundaries between these disparate

categories of identity. As the narrative progresses, we as readers are encouraged to sympathise

with one form of posthuman creation, a cyborg invention, the Robo sapiens—the “first artificial

creature that looks and acts like a human—within limits, of course” (17). Like Baggott’s wretches

and Saulter’s gems, the Robo sapiens Spike, one of just a few Robo sapiens created, is

situated as an oppressed minority figure. This is achieved as Spike’s unique subjective identity

is made a focal point as her relationship with Billie evolves. On the basis that Spike is an

android created in the image of a woman in all but the ‘Easter Island’ section of the novel, she is

merely valued for her data and status as an intergalactic sex-slave in service of male

astronauts. I analyse Winterson’s construction of Spike’s character as a means of challenging

the subordinate position of the machine Other in the human/machine binary, as Spike’s

burgeoning emotional and intellectual development embellish her ‘humanness’ and form integral

aspects of her cyborg identity.

Adopting a postmodern pastiche of different genres and conventions, Winterson utilises

science fiction as a literary space for experimenting with the boundaries between past, present

and future worlds. In teasing out the differences and affinities between human and machine,

Winterson critiques the politics concerning what it means to be human, as well as who and what

counts as human. This plays out in diverse ways throughout the narrative, from the metafictional

self-reflexivity that echoes the complex workings of human consciousness, to Billie’s narration

that reflects that her poetic sensibilities persist despite living in a desensitised world. Readers

are invited to consider key questions: if such conscious reflexivity on the moral and emotional

facets of existence is innate to human beings, what are the forces that so utterly disrupt this

potential? How do we intervene in cycles of destruction and resist the pull of social progress?

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Amidst her heavily dystopian imagining of past and future realities, Winterson’s meditations on

love and loss reflect a hopeful attitude towards leveraging posthuman possibilities as a way to

bring an end to cycles of destruction.

Posthuman politics of the environment: Winterson’s treatment of the Anthropocene

For Winterson, mankind’s tendency towards dominance over women in a patriarchal Western

world mirrors the dominance and violence inflicted on nature—just another form of Other that

can be readily manipulated, colonised and territorialised. A key focus of Rosi Braidotti’s

posthumanist project is to displace “the centrality of Anthropos” in the aim of “expos[ing] and

explod[ing] a number of boundaries between ‘Man’ and the environmental or naturalized

‘others’: animals, plants and the environment” (Posthuman Knowledge 14). Braidotti’s concern

that “the posthuman predicament” is “framed by the opportunistic commodification of all that

lives, which [...] is the political economy of advanced capitalism” (Posthuman Knowledge 16) is

starkly realised in The Stone Gods. The ravages of advanced capitalism are portrayed as

devastating and irreversible, a testament to the dangers of a cultural equation that seeks to

transform everything it touches—including nature—into a consumable commodity. In Simians,

Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway asserts her socialist-feminist

proposition that the dominance of human culture over nature in capitalist ideology can and

should be revised. In her vision, “culture does not dominate nature, nor is nature an enemy. The

dialectic must not be made into a dynamic of growing domination” (5). Haraway’s idea of a

“‘naturecultures’ continuum” (Companion Species Manifesto, NP) rather than a binary that

reinforces the supremacy of man/human/culture over the environment, resonates with a

posthuman imaginary that prefers interrelation to divisional opposition.

To posthumanist theorists like Harwaway and Braidotti, humanity is deluded in

conceiving of humans as separate or in any way superior to the natural world. Through a

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posthumanist lens, patterns of dominance, destruction, exploitation and control that characterise

humanity’s relationship with nature are seen as symptomatic of a flawed yet deeply ingrained

anthropocentric assumption that humans have rightfully claimed their position at the apex of

existence. The Stone Gods represents such destructive patterns as the catalyst for the potential

demise of both the environment and humanity. With Planet Orbus completely exhausted of

natural resources and on the cusp of total annihilation, humanity is confronted with the

opportunity to revise the relationship between nature and culture that has brought them to

environmental ruin. As I argue throughout this chapter, revising the divided and hierarchical

nature of relationships between human and Other—whether it is in the form of human/nature,

man/woman, or human/machine—is depicted in The Stone Gods as a crucial ideological

transition that humanity inevitably struggles to undertake.

In The Stone Gods, self-destruction and self-deception are inextricably connected. The

novel engages with the politics of the Anthropocene, an era that marks what Timothy Clark

defines as “the epoch at which largely unplanned human impacts on the planet’s basic

ecological systems have passed a dangerous, if imponderable threshold” (x). Clark draws on

the work of Tobias Menely and Margaret Ronda to comment on the relationship between the

“destructive side effects” of global capitalism—deforestation, pollution and immiseration—and

asserts that these side effects simultaneously reach the threshold of self-destruction and self-

deception, “as the accelerating conversion of all natural entities into forms of human capital

become more and more patently in denial of ecological realities and limits” (2). Such arguments

align with the discourse surrounding globalization and cosmopolitanization proposed by Ulrich

Beck, who perceives that we are living in a “risk society,” in “an age of unintended side effects.”

Beck claims that unless we actively “construct a series of worst-case scenarios and give them

some serious and dispassionate evaluation,” humanity will be “in danger of committing naive

mistakes” (NP). The Stone Gods can be read as Winterson’s fictional worst-case scenario,

portraying humanity’s inability to collectively disrupt cycles of environmental destruction. Eric

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Otto’s Green Speculations calls for a form of ‘environmental science fiction,’ a body of literature

that explores the politics of ecofeminism, environmental philosophy and ecology; “that reflects,

sometimes prefigures, and in its finest moments theorizes transformative environmentalism and

its assorted targets of criticism” (4-5). As both dystopian and environmental science fiction, The

Stone Gods reflects these concerns, prefiguring a range of oppositional political positions to

consider the stakes of humanity’s prioritisation of technological progression within a neoliberal

capitalist economy.

Winterson’s dystopia explores driving questions regarding the role of humanity in the

destruction of natural environments. The dystopian quality of the novel is clear in Winterson’s

grim representation of the environmental degradation of Planet Orbus, where the destructive

side effects of global capitalism have irreparably ravaged the landscape. In ‘Planet Blue’, the

protagonist, Billie, is unwillingly embroiled in a desperate quest to discover and colonise a new

planet, Planet Blue. Winterson represents civilisation on Orbus as technologically advanced to

the extent that the human population has been severed from natural biological processes.

Imagery of Orbus’s red dust that threatens to render the environment utterly toxic to all life can

be read as a motif for the moral blindness that shrouds the setting, breeding unprecedented and

unintended consequences. Billie laments: “There’s a red duststorm beginning, like spider-mites,

like ants, like things that itch and bite. No one has any idea where the red dust is coming from

but it clogs the air-filtering systems, and since it started about two years ago, we are obliged to

carry oxygen masks” (30). As a technological adaptation, the oxygen masks symbolise

disconnection between human beings and a hostile planet that is retaliating against

technological abuse—with air that bites and infects rather than sustains life. Winterson’s

oppositional politics is demonstrated in the novel’s overt resistance of the dangers of capitalist

progress and unchecked technological innovation. Through Billie’s meditation, Winterson

portrays a morally ignorant, self-centred humanity: “when we destabilised the planet it was in

the name of progress and economic growth. Now that they are redoing it, it’s selfish and it’s

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suicide” (38). Determinism verges on fatalism, suggesting that humanity lacks the potential to

change underlying destructive behaviour patterns.

Planet Blue represents a beacon of hope for humankind that the irreversible mistakes of

the past can be overcome by simply relocating. Orbus citizens perceive Planet Blue as a symbol

of humanity’s potential to begin afresh. However, this hopefulness deteriorates as each

narrative fragment reveals that virtuous human aspirations are corrupted by cycles of violence,

greed and denial. This is reinforced by the circular timeline that emerges in this section as it

becomes clear that Planet Blue is not only a future, but also a past.

Billie’s farm stands as the last natural outpost in her city, an escape from the

technologically saturated urban environment that people prefer: “in the middle of this hi-tech, hi-

stress, hi-mess life, F is for Farm. My farm” (13). While modern conveniences that privilege

instant gratification over relationships with nature are normalised, the farm signifies a past time

when human culture had not completely claimed Orbus’s resources. As Billie reflects, “My farm

is the last of its line — like an ancient ancestor everyone forgot. It’s a bio-dome world, secret

and sealed: a message in a bottle from another time” (13). Although the farm provides hope that

not all of Orbus’s natural resources have been exploited, it is notably still a farm—created for

human purposes of food production. The value of this land lies in its potential to sustain human

life: “twenty hectares of pastureland and arable” (13). Nevertheless, Billie’s relationship with her

farm suggests that its value is not merely utilitarian. Her reverence for its ability to connect her

to her ancestral past, as she describes the farm “with a stream running through the middle like a

memory” (13), reflects her longing for times preceding the posthuman, where humanity

possessed a seemingly innate, unconscious connection with nature. The symbolic association

of water, bearing potential for reconnecting Billie to a universal, non-linear realm of human

imagination that stretches beyond time and place, is echoed in her assertion, “step into that

water and you remember everything, and what you don’t remember, you invent” (13). The

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stream provides access to a dimension of existence with which the wider citizenry of Orbus

have lost connection.

Out of touch with nature, Orbus’s population have continually ignored warnings of

environmentalists. Instead they celebrate science for discovering a new planet, saving them

from annihilation and the discomfort of shifting behaviours and ideologies to accommodate

environmental repair. Billie’s narration relates the citizenry’s widespread rejection of an

ecocritical lens leading up to Planet Blue’s discovery:

This is a great day for science. The last hundred years have been hell. The doomsters

and the environmentalists kept telling us we were as good as dead and, hey presto, not

only do we find a new planet, but it is perfect for new life. This time we’ll be more careful.

This time we will learn from our mistakes. The new planet will be home to the universe’s

first advanced civilization. (7)

That the people of Orbus seek to repopulate Planet Blue with the “first advanced civilization”

contradicts the aim of learning from mistakes of the past, foreshadowing the replication of the

same self-destructive cycles of incessant progress and destruction. Dialogue reveals that

characters like Billie’s boss, Manfred, deny realities and responsibilities, manipulating rhetoric to

perpetuate delusional ideologies, “Orbus is not dying. Orbus is evolving in a way that is hostile

to human life” (8). Billie’s sharp rebuttal, “OK, so it’s the planet’s fault. We didn't do anything, did

we? Just fucked it to death and kicked it when it wouldn't get up” (8), challenges the citizenry’s

delusion of environmental evolution working against humanity’s favour. As the voice of moral

reason, Billie attempts to awaken others to an alternative stance, “Have you never heard of

global responsibility? We are all of us on the planet obliged to tend the planet” (37), to facilitate

the ideological shift necessary to move from denial and determinism, to responsibility, agency

and action. Implicit in Billie’s moral questioning is the resounding message that although the

solution to repeated destruction lies in humanity assuming greater responsibility, it remains an

act of which humans are collectively incapable.

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Winterson depicts Planet Blue as a flourishing landscape of unrecognisable plant and

animal life, exotic and untamed, yet with the biological makeup to cater for human beings. To

the human eye, this landscape is confronting and expansive, with “leaves that have grown as

big as cities,” and “birds that nest in cockleshells,” “long-toed clawprints deep as nightmares”

and “rockpools in hand-hollows finned by invisible fish” (1). The concerns of Orbus citizens

revolve around the ability of Planet Blue’s environment to meet human needs. The

anthropocentric perspective of nature as a resource for human sustenance and consumption is

relayed in the press conference in which scientists report on their discoveries. The first three

questions convey the urgency to find an alternative planet to meet survival needs, “‘is there

oxygen?’ Yes, there is. ‘And fresh water?’ Abundant. ‘And no pollution?’ None” (3). However,

the questions of concerned citizens that follow satirically indicate underlying tendencies towards

exploitation and consumption: “‘Are there minerals? Is there gold? [. . .] Has anyone tried the

fish?’” (3). Simon Hailwood suggests that from an anthropocentric viewpoint, the concept of

‘landscape’ can be defined as “nature insofar as it is modified and interpreted for human

oriented ends, moulded and used, or viewed as malleable and useful, for human interests and

needs” (40-41). Through this lens, Planet Blue’s landscape derives value from its potential to

suit human needs and preferences. The dichotomous logic of neoliberal capitalism that

privileges culture/human over nature/nonhuman is fuelled by Orbus inhabitants, notably the

scientists responsible for the quest of interplanetary discovery and colonisation. As

environmental science fiction meets political satire, ‘Planet Blue’ invites deep political

questioning of humanity’s reductive relationship with nature which is perceived as valuable

solely for its capacity to meet human needs.

Winterson’s constructed epoch clearly renders the complexity of issues contributing to

global environmental destruction in the Anthropocene. As Billie reports to the public in the

novel’s opening, “We have limited resources at our disposal, and a rising population that is by

no means in agreement about how our world as a whole should share out these remaining

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resources. Conflict is likely” (5). The concern of rectifying environmental issues is made

complex and difficult by the inability of human societies to reach consensus on viable solutions

and systems. As Clark asserts, central to the epistemological concerns of the Anthropocene is

“the uncertainty and incalculable complexity of the issues, especially in forecasting likely future

climates or the effects of human action or inaction” (xi). The possibility of Orbus scientists and

politicians to unify on a global scale to create and implement systems for resource management

and environmental repair is presented as non-existent. In The Stone Gods, the process of

rebuilding a complex system that mirrors contemporary industrialised modernity, on a new,

uncolonised planet, is depicted as a complicated and futile aim.

The novel reveals that identifying specific causes for destruction and their correlated

effects can be tedious even for those possessing moral responsibility. The hedonistic

preferences of Orbus inhabitants for comfort and shallow gratification are shaped by a culture

grounded in consumption. Reconstructing the same complex social systems on the untamed

Planet Blue seems to be the expectation of the average Orbus citizen, like Pink McMurphy, a

mouthpiece for the moral vacuity that pervades cosmopolitan Orbus:

We need infrastructure, buildings, services. If I’m going to live on a different planet I want

to do it properly. I want shops and hospitals. I’m not a pioneer. I like city life, like

everyone likes city life. The governing authority of Orbus, the Central Power believes

that the biggest obstacle to mass migration will be setting up the infrastructure in time.

(38)

Pink’s attitudes convey Winterson’s disavowal of rampant capitalism that conditions individuals

to perceive human luxuries as necessities. The novel’s depiction of the propensity towards

progress, affirmed in the satirical, “we can’t go back to the Bog Ages” (38), drips with

Winterson’s typically acerbic humour, exposing the refusal of alternative social systems that

hold potential for more harmonious relationships between humanity and nature.

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The Central Power of Orbus also seeks to implement the same complex capitalist,

consumerist systems on Planet Blue to recreate the status quo. Chris Pak identifies that science

fiction narratives of planetary adaptation typically depict processes of ‘terraforming:’ “adapting

the environmental parameters of alien planets for habitation by Earthbound life” (1). In Pak’s

definition, terraforming includes “methods for modifying a planet’s climate, atmosphere,

topology, and ecology [to transform] a planet into one sufficiently similar to the earth to support

terrestrial life” (1). Winterson employs this science-fiction convention to comment on the human

tendency to deploy technology to re-create advanced civilizations in the image of their existing

social systems. As Kopnina and Shoreman-Oimet observe, in the Anthropocene era, a

prevailing view of humanity is that “it is the environment that needs to adapt to human needs

and not the other way around” (10), with nature succumbing to the forces of cultural progress. In

The Stone Gods, this is achieved in violent, apocalyptic ways.

After arriving on Planet Blue and observing the alien wilderness, the colonisers’

discussions demonstrate that for them, beginning again means simply replicating Orbus life in a

new location. The Central Power is determined to make Planet Blue habitable for humans,

necessitating the forced extinction of the native species of ‘monsters.’ The exotic, fearsome

appearance of the monsters, “scaly-coated… with metal-plated jaws” (3-4), immediately Others

the creatures, marking them as hostile to the colonisation project. That they will be “humanely

destroyed, with the possible exception of scientific capture of one or two types for the Zooeum”

(6), is comforting for Orbus citizens, who accept that terraforming involves radical modification

of the alien planet to accommodate human life. Indeed, the very first moments of the Orbus

crew touching down on Planet Blue involve immediate destruction of tree life: “The laser was

cutting trees thirty metres tall and chopping them into two-metre lengths” (84). In discussing the

ethics of interplanetary exploration in science fiction, Dan McArthur bluntly asserts that “we will

take our human moral environment with us to other worlds along with our pith helmets” (13).

However, via Billie’s moral reasoning, Winterson offers the possibility of “beginning again

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differently” (39)—of imagining an advanced civilisation that takes advantage of technologies to

mitigate and prevent environmental ruin. Yet, while Billie optimistically states that “It might be

possible to develop a high-tech, low-impact society” (39), the novel questions whether humanity

possesses the potential to resist the allure of modernity, to “mak[e] the best of our mistakes”

(39).

Through tales of interplanetary discovery shared by the Orbus crew en route to Planet

Blue, Winterson evokes the power of storytelling in redefining dominant attitudes towards

relationships between humans and nature. The crew present vivid images of planets at varying

stages of life, decay and death, recounting the myth of Planet White. While Planet Orbus, the

‘red planet,’ represents a macrocosm in the throes of human destruction, and Planet Blue is at a

stage preceding human colonisation, Planet White is utterly devastated and lifeless: “We found

a planet, and it was white like a shroud… wrapped in its own death” (62; emphasis in original).

The existence of the deathly Planet White represents an extreme dystopian vision of a future

Earth ravaged by unchecked “progress”—a scenario in which delusional hopes for biological

regeneration have long been relinquished to the sobering reality of unending lifelessness. The

dissolution of human constructs of time that divide life into past, present and future

characterises this bleak white terrain: “This was the white at the end of the world when nothing

is left, not the past, not the present and, most fearful of all, not the future. There was no future in

this bleached and boiled place...The world was a white-out. The experiment was done” (63;

emphasis in original). With the erasure of the future comes the erasure of any promises that an

apocalyptic end can hold hope for a new beginning—a perspective challenged later in ‘Wreck

City,’ as the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Dark Forest regenerates to give birth to new

forms of posthuman life.

The Planet White myth carries a clear ending that culminates in utter destruction, a

sharp reminder that hopes to ‘start again’ can be just that—merely hopes. Only the misshapen

remnants of modernity remain as cultural artefacts that testify to the collapse of the

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Anthropocene: “Like an elephant’s graveyard, the Crypt was stacked with the carcasses of

plants and cars that continually melted in the intense heat and then re-formed into their old

shapes, or shapes more bizarre, as the cars grew wings, and the planes compressed into

wheelless boxes with upturned tails” (63; emphasis in original). Winterson’s portrayal of the

mangled wreckage of a human society presents a catastrophic future scenario that positions us

to view the trajectory of our own posthuman future on planet Earth through a heightened

ecocritical lens. As environmental science fiction that questions humanity’s tenuous relationship

with nature, such bleak depictions of depleted posthuman landscapes project the ravages of the

Anthropocene that leaves behind its indelible and irreparable marks.

The novel’s structure with its disparate spatial and temporal locations works to expose

how history repeats itself with devastating consequences for both humanity and the

environment. Critic Daphne M. Grace describes The Stone Gods as a “shipwreck story” (192),

and in its portrayal of ill-fated internal and external exploratory voyages guided by the human

desire for colonising and conquering new lands, this is an apt observation. The second section,

‘Easter Island,’ takes place in an entirely different setting and context, eighteenth-century

Rapanui. In a shipwreck narrative that draws parallels between posthuman and human worlds

to critique mankind’s propensity for destruction, the wreckages of Planets Blue, White and

Orbus find a parallel in the setting of the environmentally decimated Easter Island that is

grounded in real human history. There are moments in each of the novel’s sections when

individuals lament the loss of connection, nature and life. In ‘Planet Blue,’ Billie’s reflections on

her connection to her farm become a requiem for its inevitable loss, while in ‘Easter Island,’ a

male manifestation of the ‘Billie’ protagonist, Billy, wonders at humanity’s inability to preserve

and sustain life: “Yet if this dismal island had at some time boasted forests and groves, why had

no pains been taken to maintain such as is needed for the minimum requirements of life?” (122).

The future trajectory of humanity’s destructive tendencies are as much the focus of the novel as

past patterns of exploitation and destruction. The vast gap between the speculated science-

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fiction imaginings of the novel’s first section and our own human past is bridged by the

depictions of earlier, similarly shortsighted and violent human societies bent on privileging

‘progress’ over preservation.

Further, the ‘Wreck City’ section serves to bookend Winterson’s differing representations

of extreme environmental destruction and violence. Winterson here engages in dystopian post-

apocalyptic fiction, presenting the aftermath of nuclear war to foreground a violent ending as

well as an altogether different ‘new beginning’ to those presented in other sections. Like Planet

White, the Dead Forest in ‘Wreck City’ represents another cycle of humanity’s propensity for

destroying rather than sustaining life. Billie describes the Dead Forest as looking “like nothing

from Nature: its baleful aspect was more like a nineteenth-century asylum than anything life had

created” (200), a landscape symbolising the horrors of a manmade wasteland that is

simultaneously living and dead. Existence can no longer be defined in terms of conventional

perceptions of life and death, the simile, “it was like walking into a corpse, only the corpse

wasn’t dead” (200), capturing the uncanny experience of entering this posthuman landscape.

The imagery describing the forest is in places distinctly Gothic in its aesthetic, as in, “a petrified

forest of blackened and shocked trees, silent, like a haunted house. I moved towards it,

frightened of what I would find, with an instinct for danger that only happens when there really is

danger” (191), creating an impression of a dark and hostile posthuman setting. The sense of

horror at entering this toxic environment is characterised by abject fear and repulsion, with the

experience of walking on the soggy forest floor related as “like walking on pulped meat” (191).

Indeed, death and violence are written onto this ruined landscape as a visceral and unavoidable

presence.

The Dead Forest is part of ‘the Unknown,’ the name given to the post-apocalyptic

landscape that exists outside of the boundaries of Wreck City, a posthuman terrain in the sense

that its radioactive toxicity makes it uninhabitable for healthy, ‘normal’ life. In describing the

Unknown, Winterson literalises the term “posthuman,” as the barman, Friday, explains: “It’s

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radioactive. It’s re-evolving. It’s Life after Humans, whatever that is, but you know what? It can’t

be so much worse, can it?” (188). The forms of life that are ‘re-evolving’ in the wake of nuclear

war are deformed and diseased. Billie describes “small, stunted leaves with anaemic yellow

stems'' that provide sustenance for “rabbit-like animals – hairless, deformed, one with red weals

on its back” (202). These posthuman life forms regenerating in the detritus of mass war are

monstrous by normative human standards in Wreck City, an observation that Friday relates to

Billie, “There’s life – not the kind of life you’d want to get into bed with, or even the kind of life

you’d want to find under the bed, but life. Nature isn’t fussy” (192). Posthuman life is

regenerating in frightening, unpredictable ways, as Winterson’s novel again testifies to the

disastrous outcomes of humanity’s self-destructive cycles of violence. In Billie’s anaphoric

observation, “The ugliness of the ruins – that was a shock – the ugliness of what we had built,

the ugliness of how we had destroyed it, the brutal, stupid, money-soaked, drunken binge of

twenty-first-century world. Whiteout. Done” (194), the finality of the truncated single word

sentences, “Whiteout. Done” directly mirrors the images of Planet White, a completely lifeless

world reduced to the destroyed relics of a human civilisation.

Despite witnessing apocalyptic destruction, Billie still entertains the possibility of

rebuilding “a human society that wasn’t just disgust” (216). Implicit in this possibility is a

yearning for humanity to recalibrate, to learn from the mistakes of the past and put an end to

destructive cycles. Yet this hopeful longing is not given space to flourish within the narrative.

Readers are continually reminded that despite the best intentions of some individuals, humanity

repeatedly fails to exercise caution in their treatment of natural life forms, which are ultimately

deemed secondary considerations to power and progress. As Billie bemoans, “These worlds

need nothing from us, except that we leave them alone – but we never do” (201), suggesting

that although the solution appears simple, both distant and contemporary histories have proven

that humans lack the hindsight and foresight to protect their worlds from finding violent endings.

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Posthuman bodies as Others in The Stone Gods

Natural landscapes are not the only territories to be Othered and colonised throughout The

Stone Gods as Winterson depicts the ways in which human bodies can also become occupied

sites ripe for exploitation. Turning now to consider Winterson’s posthuman politics of the body, I

argue that the novel’s distinctively technophobic attitude towards the potentialities of

biotechnological “progress” extends to the bodies of the marginalised. In this section, I explore

the ways in which Winterson mobilises the posthuman in ‘Planet Blue’ to portray a society that

has gone so far in the pursuit of youthfulness that it has legalised radical forms of bodily

mutation and paedophillia, perpetuating the dehumanisation and commodification of the bodies

of women and children. In ‘Planet Blue,’ the Central Power, is a corporatised conglomerate that

peddles the utopian dream of an ageless, ailment free population. Simmering beneath the

surface of this “civilised” postindustrial society, however, lies a dystopian nightmare of stark

gender exploitation and intergenerational abuse. Women’s bodies are represented as

posthuman sites open to the control and manipulation of sickeningly predatory male desires. In

this society, natural biological processes such as ageing can be impeded or even reversed by

technology through genetic ‘Fixing,’ legally regulated bioengineering that enables women to

permanently fix their bodies at a ‘desirable’ age. Genetic Reversal is another biomedical

procedure that enables people to return to a more youthful and sexually appealing age. In the

present time of the novel, the age of consent has been lowered to fourteen; however, men in

positions of power contest this age limit and openly defy it as sex with minors is accepted and

even glorified by male authorities and citizens of Orbus.

Through this society, Winterson darkly satirises the cultural pressure on women to

maintain youthful appearances, while men remain comparatively exempt from the need to

achieve agelessness. If anything, Orbus men are permitted to maintain social and sexual appeal

even while showing signs of ageing. Billie’s observations reveal that this gendered imbalance

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has been reinforced by scientific progress rather than resolved: “Science can’t fix everything,

though — women feel they have to look youthful, men less so, and the lifestyle programmes are

full of the appeal of the older man” (14). On Orbus, men are able to seize technology and the

law to align the aesthetics and functionality of women’s bodies with their own preferences for

eternal youthfulness and hyperbolic sexualised beauty. For example, men petition to

governmental authorities to lower the age for legal Genetic Fixing, which would allow for

females to be Fixed at a prepubescent age. Luna Dolezal discusses the ways in which

biotechnologies “often reproduce and reinforce negative heterosexual patriarchal dynamics” as

“women are figured as passive, receptive, and dominated, while men are active, self-

determining, and productive” (99-100). Dolezal’s work emphasises that this is a cultural pattern

at work in The Stone Gods, where cosmetic surgeries and genetic engineering are utilised in

service of the sexual preferences of men, expressing “a high level of gendered control and

disempowerment in the society’s use of technology, particularly those technologies which work

on the body” (92). Indeed, under the control of the Central Power, the bodies of both women

and children become Othered terrains, prostituted to the capitalist and patriarchal imperatives of

the state. The women and children of Orbus are coerced into complicity with systems and

ideologies that only serve to sexualise, medicalise and infantilise their bodies.

In both fictional and real worlds, the assumed solidity of nature as an entity that can

stand firmly against its cultural antagonists has now been overturned by posthuman realities

that render “the natural” as “increasingly culturalized and open to culture’s experimental forces”

(Katz and Marshall 54). On Orbus, in a culture where even the average citizen has taken

advantage of enhancement technologies like plastic surgery, celebrities in The Stone Gods

undergo radical cosmetic procedures to create exaggerated human forms. Their bodies become

canvasses for hyperbolised expressions of human desire and embodiment with “boobs [that]

swell like beach balls” and “dicks [that] go up and down like umbrellas” (19). Through such

humorous, satirical portrayals of extreme cosmetic enhancements, Winterson’s narrative

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critiques the pervasive influence of celebrity culture in our modern world and portrays it as

deplorable and superficial. Here, sexualised features of human anatomy are inflated to absurd

proportions to express Winterson’s explicit disapproval of cultures that praise hypersexualised

and exaggerated forms of the human body and elevate celebrities to the status of revered

luminaries for embodying such extremes. In this way, the novel’s exaggerated images of

posthuman bodies satirise the mechanisms via which the human body can become a physical

site onto which idealised cultural imperatives can be imprinted.

In discussing Winterson’s representation of technologically “enhanced” male and female

bodies in The Stone Gods, Kerim Yazgünoğlu points out that it is the corporealities of both

genders in this posthuman society that are “objectified, sexualized, medicalized, programmed,

controlled, oppressed... technologically engineered” and “seen as malleable things, easily

fashioned according to a cultural ideal” (151). While I agree that the novel does represent the

human body as a site occupied by those in control, for Winterson gender is a significant factor

that influences how culture is inscribed onto the body. Through the construction of female

characters like Pink who revere and attempt to replicate hyperbolised cultural productions

embodied by celebrity icons, we observe the allure of technological consumption played out as

female identity becomes a “hypervisible” phenomenon (King 175). Hence, the toxic and

dangerous nature of patriarchal codes that transmute youthful femininity into a sexualised

spectacle are portrayed in intentionally sickening lucidity. Through portrayals of perverted

hyperfemininity, readers are unsettled by the prospect of a future posthuman world in which the

bodies of women and children become occupied territory of the dominant patriarchal culture.

On Planet Orbus, with the radical normalisation of Genetic Reversal and Fixing, the

concept of ‘getting old’ has become outmoded and ageing is perceived as pathological rather

than natural. The Stone Gods satirises the increasing pressure in twenty-first century western

culture to ‘age successfully’ in alignment with normative cultural expectations by utilising

whatever scientific and technological means necessary. Critics of contemporary cosmetic

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technologies have theorised the shifts in attitudes towards ageing that have taken place as a

consequence of advancements in anti-ageing technologies such as cosmeceuticals and plastic

surgery. Refusing to exercise control over our ageing bodies in a late consumer capitalist

society that grants individuals the ‘opportunity’ to shape and “choose” their bodies, potentially

becomes a signifier of social deviance. On Orbus, the personal consequences of a woman

‘failing’ to exercise control over her ageing body include sexual rejection in heteronormative

relationships, as aged women fail to maintain the sexual desire of their male partners; thus, they

perceive technology as the ultimate solution. In this regard, Winterson’s Orbus confronts

readers with depictions of women’s bodies reduced to specimens for experimentation—

canvasses on which to enact patriarchal cultural imperatives of unending youth and

hyperbolised standards of beauty.

Billie is placed in an ambivalent political position as a woman who advocates for

maintaining connection with natural biological processes while working for Enhancement

Services, the organisational body responsible for approving genetic enhancement procedures

under the Central Power. Billie defies the law and personally rejects social pressure to Fix her

age and appearance, maintaining that many of the current applications of biotechnologies are in

breach of ethical guidelines and sever humanity from their roots in nature. However, Billie’s

encounter on a public street with an ageing woman who refused to Fix her age in an act of

political rebellion potently depicts the anxiety produced by the ageing body in a posthuman

culture that prescribes flawless youthfulness as the ideal. This attitude is evident in Billie’s

visceral reaction to the sight of the aged woman: “I recoiled. I had never seen a living person

look like this. I had seen archive footage of how we used to age, and I had seen some of the

results of medical experiments, but in front of me, now, was a thing with skin like a lizard’s, like

a stand-up handbag” (45). The imagery of the aged woman’s skin as leathery and animalistic

positions the reader to perceive the aged body as lifeless and dehumanised. The effect of this is

to perhaps stir the reader’s own anxieties towards the ageing body, inducing a similar sense of

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ambivalence towards the utilisation of biotechnologies as that experienced by Billie. However,

as she is confronted with the shocking reality of rebellion, Billie questions her political position

and recognises that potential consequences of failing to conform to ideals of youth and

beauty—social exclusion and self-loathing—may override her desire to radically resist the status

quo.

These complexities are made patent as Billie is shocked when she nears the woman

and overhears her mutter the words “getting old,” observing, “we don’t use those words any

more. We don’t need to use them: they are irrelevant to our experience” (44). Posthuman

technologies have enabled the humans of Orbus to eradicate ageing as a lived phenomenon, a

radical cultural shift that further divorces citizens from natural cycles of life, ageing and death.

The ‘aged woman’ becomes a symbol of everything that society rejects. As Billie relates to the

reader, “her face was lined, worn, weathered, battered, purple-veined and liver-spotted, with a

slot for a mouth, garishly coated with red lipstick” (45), mirroring what Abigail T. Brooks

describes as reductive cultural equations between age and decay in our contemporary world

(2017). The aged woman refuses to conform to a patriarchal culture that regulates the

appearance of the female body, positioning her as an outsider, a status that Winterson

literalises through the woman’s self-imposed reclusiveness: “for the last twenty years I have

only been able to go out on pollution days so that no one can see my face. If you saw my body,

you’d throw up” (45). That the woman is acutely aware of the revulsion she generates in

onlookers suggests that cultural codes that judge the physical body are thoroughly entrenched

in this dystopian world. She has subjectively internalised the reality that as a woman, her

naturally ageing face and body deviates from dominant cultural imperatives of femininity that

idealise youth and beauty, having clearly learned of the correlation between her ageing body

and social worth.

Winterson’s critique of a culture’s utilising technological advances in service of male

desire is graphically portrayed through images of paedophilic rape of prepubescent children.

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The idealisation of youthfulness is taken to toxic extremes on Planet Orbus as men who are

attracted to and engage in relationships with adolescent children as young as twelve drive the

sexual economy. As a perverse and unsettling version of the posthuman, the desire for

youthfulness translates into paedophilic perversion for Orbus citizens. With youth and beauty

easy to come by, men have become conditioned to pursuing increasingly younger targets: “Now

that everyone is young and beautiful, a lot of men are chasing girls who are just kids. They want

something different when everything has become the same” (21). The verb “chasing” takes on

predatory, sinister connotations when applied to the sexual pursuit of underage girls. While

many Orbus women opt to Fix themselves in their twenties or early thirties, Winterson portrays

that as cultural norms shift alongside technological advancement, male sexual preferences for

extreme youth drive women to Fix as adolescents as young as legally permissible. With the aim

of emulating twelve-year-old pop star, Little Señorita, “who has Fixed herself rather than lose

her fame” (19), prepubescent girls are choosing to Fix themselves as children. Billie wonders at

the future of females in a society where biotechnologies are leveraged to further colonise and

sexualise the bodies of girls and women: “So this is the future: girls Fixed at eight years old,

maybe ten, hopefully twelve. Or will they want women’s minds in girls’ bodies and go for genetic

reversal?” (26). This question is significant for considering the abuse of adult power and

responsibility related to paedophilia as perpetrators appallingly dominate or manipulate the

immature minds of children. Here, Billie’s anxieties are exacerbated by the reality that female

bodies are at the whim of male desires—and technology has afforded a means to utterly occupy

and reshape women’s bodies in accordance with these desires.

Orbus men are able to manipulate both laws and technology to fulfil their deplorable

desires, fighting to lower the legal age for Fixing and importing children from outside of the

Central Power to work in brothels like the Peccadillo. Billie laments that “sexy sex is now about

freaks and children… Kids under ten are known as veal in the trade” (23). When Billie visits the

Peccadillo to speak to Pink McMurphy’s husband about her desire to significantly reverse her

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age, she acknowledges the dehumanisation of children as sexual objects, proclaiming “Today at

the Peccadillo it’s a Veal Special,” observing a man “heading for the Jacuzzi with a ten-year-old

boy on his shoulders and a ten-year-old girl in his arms” (23). The sickening quality of the sexual

preference for children is dramatised by Winterson’s dark humour, with Billie’s sarcastic voice

providing biting social commentary. This is evident in her comment “it’s going to be wonderful

here on Planet Lolita” (22), which intertextually references Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial

1955 novel, Lolita. The novel garnered mass attention for its sick and scandalous representation

of a twelve-year-old girl’s sexual relationship with her stepfather, reflecting the shocking nature

of such revelations. While the experiences of Lolita were the product of sexual abuse and

paedophilic rape, the ironic label “Planet Lolita” signals the wide scale normalisation of criminal

power relations between men and children that condone and even glamourise situations of

abuse.

The representation of sickening extremes of pursuing youth is made more alarming as

women are also seen as complicit in the abuse of children. Ironically, while Billie works in

‘Enhancement Services,’ she seems to be the character most soberly aware of the implications

of these advancements. Billie is sent to a work appointment at the home of Mary “Pink”

McMurphy, an Orbus woman who functions as a foil to Billie’s resistance to the allure of

technological enhancement. Pink is celebrity-obsessed, costumes herself to embody an

adolescent form of hyperfemininity, and is preoccupied with genetically Fixing herself to become

sexually desirable in the eyes of her paedophilic husband. Billie notices that Pink’s cushions are

“the colour of Turkish Delight,” and she wears a pink school uniform that she hitches up to

expose more of her body (20), prompting the observation that “it’s all one childish, knowing, pre-

teen turn-on” (21). As a parody of normalised femininity, Pink exhibits an overt willingness to

comply with and perpetuate patriarchal social codes that sexualise certain kinds of female

bodies. As Dolezal asserts: “Like many women who engage in cosmetic surgery and other

medical interventions to modify the body according to prevailing heteronormative standards,

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Pink sees her desire to undergo genetic reversal as an expression of her own autonomy, rather

than coercion by broader patriarchal structures” (100).

Pink’s disregard of the potentially disastrous health risks of using unpredictable

technological procedures to Fix herself as young as possible indicates the significant social

coercion that leads Orbus women to manipulate their bodies to meet the sexualised female

ideal. Women like Pink are socially conditioned to internalise male desires as their own—the

first stage of a manipulation process that then enables those in power to seize technologies to

work on the body. Pink’s attitude towards her husband’s infidelity and paedophillic behaviour

also reveals her complicity in allowing sexual practices that condone sex with prepubescent

children and highlights her denial of any form of social responsibility or ethical standards. Even

though Billie confronts Pink with the legal fact that the age of consent is set at fourteen years of

age, notably lower than current standards in Western countries, Pink flippantly rejects her moral

concern: “But everybody does it younger. Y’know that!” (20). Winterson plays on her implied

reader’s abhorrence of paedophilia, inciting moral outrage at the prospect that biotechnological

consumption can both reflect the morally perverse potentialities of human nature, and reshape

cultural boundaries that should protect vulnerable populations from predators.

Throughout The Stone Gods, Winterson presents a dangerous cultural mix of social

trends that privilege male desire, agelessness, celebrity adulation and sexualisation of women

and children to critique the normalisation of these pernicious forms of socio-cultural evolution.

As dystopian science fiction, Winterson’s narrative engages familiar tropes of posthuman body

modification and a radically technologised futuristic world to satirise patterns of unjust gender

and sexual politics she has made evident across her oeuvre. To this end, Winterson exposes

startling inequalities that emerge from the utilisation of technologies, examining the extent to

which abuses of technology are triggered by appalling social and moral perversities that

characterise the ‘dark side’ of the human condition.

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Posthuman relationships: deconstructing the boundaries between human and machine

The relationships between human and machine represented in The Stone Gods provide an

examination of the Othering of individuals deemed non-human, inhuman, subhuman or

posthuman. The most advanced form of artificial intelligence in the novel is the ‘Robo sapiens,’

a name that suggests a fusion of human and machine, as well as the evolution of humanity

towards unification with the posthuman. The narrator describes the Robo sapiens as “the first

artificial creature that looks and acts human, and that can evolve like a human — within limits, of

course” (17), indicating that it is a being subjected to stringent human controls. Robo sapiens

are also prized as a symbol of class status and wealth by the Central Power. They are rare,

exclusive and “fabulously expensive to make” (17). Just as in Gemsigns, where the gems are

considered as subhuman and therefore commodified and exploited, Spike, the novel’s principal

example of a Robo sapiens, is treated as a disposable commodity exploited for her data and

sexualised artificial body. The same patriarchal values of Orbus that lead human women to be

sexualised and objectified are projected onto Spike, a state-owned object granted zero

autonomy by authorities. However, the romantic relationship that evolves between Billie and

Spike expresses evolving kinship between human and machine. By placing emphasis on love

and kinship as well as the biological differences between the disparate categories of ‘human’

and ‘machine,’ Winterson’s narrative illustrates the value of forging meaningful connection

between human and Other.

Spike was created to serve as an astronaut on board the exploratory space mission to

‘Planet Blue’ and to meet the sexual needs of the male astronauts. However, on returning to

Orbus, Spike is deemed no longer useful to human society once her valuable data is extracted.

Billie interviews Spike for a television program just prior to the Robo sapiens being “dismantled”

(37), a euphemism for the death of an android. The process is represented in a highly clinical

manner, akin to switching off a light switch or power point to deactivate a computer. It is Spike’s

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data, her ‘life’s blood’ (29), that is most valuable, not her status as an individual with agency.

Billie muses: “she’ll go backstage, transfer all her data, and open her power cells until her last

robot flicker. The End. It’s a kind of suicide, a kind of bleeding to death, but they show no

emotion because emotions are not part of their programming” (7). Yet during their interview,

Billie feels a sense of kinship with Spike and determines to help her escape, forging the

beginning of their queer human/machine love story. In considering her evolving relationship with

Spike, Billie reflects on the inability for machines to experience emotion, a delineating factor

pitched by those in power on Orbus as a key argument for their non-humanness. However, the

assumption that humans can be defined by their capacity for emotion is challenged by the

narrative as the human populations are represented as emotionally disconnected, while the

Robo sapiens develops the capacity for rich emotional depth and expression. Through the

portrayal of Spike as a robot with consciousness that imbues her with the status of a moral

being, Winterson deconstructs a long-standing boundary between human and machine to

convey that the emotional experience of love between cultural Others can serve as a bridge

between categories of identity deemed incompatible.

Winterson questions the assumption that machines should merely be regarded as tools

to serve human functions. The commodification of Spike, who is deployed as an intergalactic

sex-slave, further indicates Winterson’s concern that in a patriarchal economy, technologies can

be seized in service of male sexual desires. This also opens us to other questions regarding the

ethics of using artificial sources of intelligent life to meet human ends. As Kerstin Dautenhahn

explains in theorising the commodification of posthuman life in our contemporary world, “the

better artificial robotic or computational agents can meet our human cognitive and social needs,

i.e., the more they appear like us, the more familiar and natural they are and the more

effectively they can be used as tools” (583). This resonates with Winterson’s portrayal of a Robo

sapien female who is both “absurdly beautiful” (30) and more intelligent than the men in her

space crew. Billie asks the question: “Spike, you’re a robot, but why are you such a drop-dead

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gorgeous robot? I mean, is it necessary to be the most sophisticated machine ever built and to

look like a movie star?” (30). Although inter-species sex with robots is punishable by death on

Orbus, as humans and machines are deemed starkly incompatible beings, the concern here is

more a matter of gendered injustice as females are commodified as sources of male pleasure.

Spike’s reply, “They thought I would be good for the boys on the mission” (30), baffles Billie,

who wonders how the most cognitively advanced member of the crew could be willing to be

sexually exploited. Winterson centres the concern here around the fact not that Spike is a robot,

but that she is a woman. As both an intelligent machine and a female, she is an exploited

minority. Billie responds with moral outrage at the notion that Spike “used up three silicon-lined

vaginas” (31) as her dual purpose on board the spacecraft was as both astronaut and sex-slave.

It is notable that for the citizens and authorities of Orbus, Spike’s status as a ‘female’ who meets

physical ideals of beauty and fulfils her role in the sexual economy is just as integral to her

android identity as her unprecedented levels of artificial intelligence.

Spike’s potential to feel emotion and love develops in response to her interactions with

human beings, and she is humanised in the process. Mark Coeckelbergh identifies in our

contemporary world an expectation that robots must possess developed emotional capabilities

in order to be recognised as moral beings. This assessment of robots requiring emotion is made

true of Spike, as, despite being a robot, she is poetic in her sensibilities, curious and desirous in

her longing to feel love and connection in its variant forms. Her ability to feel compassion for

humans is linked to her moral development, which draws her closer toward the category of

human on the human/machine spectrum that operates within the novel. Coeckelbergh attests to

the significant relationship between human emotion and the ability to regulate morality and

supports the claim that emotions are indispensable when it comes to moral judgment and

adequate ethical reasoning (236). This view develops the foundation for arguing that it would

not be sound to engineer robots that only had the capacity for following programmed rules,

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without a moral compass regulated by emotional capabilities of “fear, compassion, care, and

love” (236). As Coeckelbergh states:

This lack of emotion would render them non-moral agents—i.e. agents that follow rules

without being moved by moral concerns—and they would even lack the capacity to

discern what is of value. They would be morally blind. If these robots were given full

independence—absence of external control by humans, which is another condition for

full moral agency—they would pose danger to humans and other entities. (236)

In light of this perspective, if a Robo sapiens is to be perceived as a moral being, emotional

capabilities are a prerequisite—a key question explored through the relationships between

Spike and humans within the novel.

Billie’s initial presumption is that Spike does not display emotion when she is about to be

dismantled as “she has no emotion to show” (33). However, during the Planet Blue mission,

Spike’s ability to evolve in accordance with her relationships with others and the external

environment enables her to cultivate emotional capabilities beyond her programming. When

Spike does not display love towards Handsome, Pink mistakes this for her inability to love given

her status as a robot by definition void of emotional responses. When Spike corrects Pink,

informing her that it is not because she is a robot that she does not have feelings for him, but

because she simply does not feel attraction to him specifically, she highlights her ability to

assess the complexity of her relationships with others.

Further, the novel’s questioning of what constitutes human consciousness gains

momentum as Spike’s consciousness evolves from rationalism and factual recall to complex

emotional experiences through her interactions with human beings and literature. Grace sums it

up well, explaining that Winterson’s characterisation of Spike suggests that “authentic”

consciousness is incomplete without emotional content” (191). The love that Handsome

expresses towards her enables Spike’s discovery of what it means to be loved, triggering her

first emotional response. At first, Spike’s response to reading John Donne’s poetry is presented

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as lacking emotionality, given the associations between poetic expression and depth of feeling:

“I can read several languages and I can process information as fast as a Mainframe computer,

but I did not understand that single line of text” (80). This suggests that her abilities were initially

confined to computation of information rather than the comprehension of emotional experiences

like love, but this shifts when Handsome quotes Donne’s poetry, calling Spike “My new-found

land” (80-81). The paternalistic connotations of this intertextual reference echo the patriarchal

values of Orbus as the female figure is metaphorically referred to as land to be colonised, while

the male is the patriarchal colonising figure who claims possession. As Spike analyses the

situation by accessing her data, she assumes she is experiencing a system failure, yet soon

realises that she is acquiring an entirely new lens of comprehension: “I was sensing something

completely new to me. For the first time I was able to feel” (81). Rather than being entrapped

within a fixed loop of comprehension via data analysis, Spike exhibits human attributes of

emotionality and curiosity about the personal growth that fresh experiences can induce. This

expresses the transformational effect that Handsome’s love had on her, sparking her desire to

learn what it is to love another: “Handsome has shown me what it feels like to be loved in this

way, but I want to know what it feels like to be the one who loves in this way” (81). This pivotal

moment clarifies the notion that, as Billie states, “love is an intervention” (71), a way that human

beings, and Robo sapiens alike, can exercise power over a seemingly deterministic universe to

regain hope that their actions can change destructive cycles. Just as Handsome’s love

catalysed an evolutionary leap in Spike’s emotional development, Winterson suggests that love

can intervene in cultural patterns in unprecedented, formative ways.

Spike refutes the idea that her status as a moral being should be judged on the basis of

her capacity for human-like emotional expression, exposing the discrepancies that human

beings display when it comes to authentic emotion. She argues that “Human beings often

display emotion they do not feel. And they often feel emotion they do not display’ (75). This

sparks Billie’s realisation that her own emotional responses are unpredictable and contradictory:

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“That’s a description of me all right. I keep myself locked as a box when it matters, and broken

open when it doesn’t matter at all” (75). Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach discuss humanity’s

expectation of infallible moral and emotional capability in artificially intelligent agents, an

expectation that humans themselves are not capable of fulfilling: “People expect and tolerate

human moral failures. However, they might not tolerate such failures in their machines… we

shall probably expect more of our machines than we do of ourselves” (71). In this sense, it

seems unreasonable to apply the same expectations to socially intelligent machines like the

Robo sapiens, begging the question of whether characteristics of moral and emotional

infallibility be considered when assessing their differences from humans. Winterson’s narrative

exposes the double standard whereby machine life is required to possess human traits of

wisdom, emotional sensitivity and moral reasoning that are out of reach for the majority of

humankind.

As Billie’s relationship with Spike progresses, she overcomes the sense that the

differences between them are too significant to bridge the gap between human and machine: “I

forget all the time that she’s a robot, but what’s a robot? A moving lump of metal. In this case an

intelligent, ultra-sensitive moving lump of metal. What’s a human? A moving lump of flesh, in

most cases not intelligent or remotely sensitive” (99). Winterson depicts Spike as highly

sophisticated in her emotional sensitivity and her ability to love and reason, while addressing

humanity’s inability to maintain a consistent moral and emotional compass. This directly

challenges the double standard to which posthumans are held, as in Gemsigns, in which the

gems are expected to uphold a behavioural standard that was impossible for norm humans to

maintain. Further, in a conversation with Pink McMurphy on the mission to Planet Blue, Spike

questions Pink’s definition of a human being as capable of experiencing emotion asking, “How

much emotion?” and “The more sensitive a person is, the more human they are?” (78). In this

exchange of dialogue, Spike exposes the flawed logic of utilising emotional capacity as a

measure of humanness. The Stone Gods repeatedly points to the moral and emotional frailty of

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humanity. In doing so, it emphasises that the differences between human neural and limbic

systems and artificial circuitry do not necessarily situate human and machine as diametrically

opposed categories of identity. Rather, the novel suggests that as people focus on the affinities

between humans and Othered individuals, embodied differences become less significant to the

construction of equal relationship dynamics. This presents a paradox operating within the novel

as on the one hand, machines are expected to possess emotions to be classified as human,

and Spike meets this criteria when she develops emotional valence that exceeds some of the

humans in her company. On the other hand, Spike argues that emotional capacity should not

define humanity and the narrative highlights a range of characters whose emotional registers

are significantly limited. This points to the novel’s rejection of the perpetual project of

distinguishing between human and Other by seeking to define these categories of identity

according to particular similarities and differences.

The idea that artificially intelligent machines can evolve beyond the scope of their

programming is a source of fear and anxiety commonly expressed in science-fiction literature,

and The Stone Gods is no exception. According to Dautenhahn, the relationship between

humans and cognitive technologies cannot be viewed as static and segregated. Processes of

co-evolution and co-adaptation are inevitable, producing fresh forms of sociality that places

humans within the technological “loop” (576). Winterson’s focus is on this co-evolutionary

relationship between human and machine—that one can radically affect the development of the

other, and vice versa. She constructs a strong loop between human and machine, with the

binding agent between them being love. As an intervention in the differences that ordinarily

stand between the two ostensibly opposed categories of identity, love is represented as a force

that can affect change in human psychological and emotional states, disrupting entrenched

social division. As Spike pursues deepened physical and emotional contact with Billie, she

openly resists the assumption that machine and human cannot successfully coalesce. Billie’s

views, “I can’t sleep with a computer” and “You can’t love me. You don’t know me,” along with

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the question, “can you only love what you know?” are met with Spike’s resistance, “I want to

touch you” (82; emphasis in original), which challenges the human fallacy that sameness is a

prerequisite for love. In this way, Winterson portrays love and connection as pathways for

moving beyond notions of difference and sameness, to transcend humanist logic and embrace a

posthuman symbiosis of human and Other. Far from expressing a fearful attitude towards the

coalescence of human and machine, here The Stone Gods presents this posthuman possibility

as an opportunity to overcome division and find unity between oppositional categories.

Spike’s observation that “Nothing is solid… Nothing is fixed” (111), applies to physical

and ideological planes of existence, while also dismantling the weight of fixed truths that govern

relationships between human and Other. Billie is overtly aware of the physical differences

between herself and Spike, clearly marking the aspects of biology and function that separate

human and machine: “My lover is made of a meta-material, a polymer tough as metal” (83).

However, rather than allowing their differences to justify further distance between human and

machine, Billie focuses on the similarities that bridge the gap, clarifying that Spike’s polymer is

“pliable and flexible and capable of heating and cooling, just like human skin” (83). Spike’s

reflection on the human phenomenon of love expressed in Donne’s “The Sun Rising” expresses

her own burgeoning capacity for emotional connection. When Billie and Spike discuss the

definition of love as a chance ‘to be human,’ Spike is able to comprehend the expansive

potential of human love, an experience that will be captured again in the future through poetry

“when someone finds that the stretch of the body-beloved is the landmass of the world” (110).

At this stage of the novel, the differences between human and machine are portrayed as vastly

less important than their affinities. Love and kinship are binding agents that rely on kinds of

emotional mutuality of which both human and posthuman life forms are capable. In this sense,

the narrative bridges the gap between human and posthuman, portraying a personal

relationship grounded in genuine connection and understanding.

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As a cross-species and cross-gender relationship, the connection between Billie and

Spike is political in its direct challenge to social laws that also dictate the laws of love. Billie

confesses that her growing love for Spike enables her to overcome her fear and apprehension

towards coupling with an entity whose biology and embodiment is so vastly different from her

own: “She is a stranger. She is the strange that I am beginning to love” (107). Spike’s perceived

‘strangeness’—her foreignness and difference—dissipates as Billie recognises her emotional

affinity with the Robo sapiens. The affective potential of the human machine loop created via

their union is evident as Billie detaches Spike’s head from her torso, thereby ridding her of the

overt physical differences that the mechanical body presents to become mere consciousness.

This process entails a literal stripping away of the significance of the corporeal body as Spike is

taken apart limb by limb, reducing her body to “a piece of armour she has taken off. Now she is

what she said life would be — consciousness” (111). The detachment of Spike’s head, torso

and limbs symbolises escape from the materiality of the body as a sexualised and gendered

commodity. In effect, another dimension of difference is removed in this movement, affording

both individuals further opportunity to bridge the gaps that exist between them. At this moment

in ‘Planet Blue,’ it appears that in removing Spike’s body, the lovers are able to connect on an

emotionally intimate level, beyond fear and division. When Billie kisses Spike’s mouth and

reflects, “Your mouth is a cave. This cave is your mouth. I am inside you, and there is nothing to

fear” (111), the metaphor of entering the cave conveys deep intimacy between human and

machine brought about by the experience of ardent romantic love. Grace affirms that in

constructing a narrative in which robots and humans can teach each other how to love,

Winterson implores readers to consider that “the capacity for emotions of love and passion exist

regardless of the types of physical body: consciousness is beyond the body” (194). Indeed,

Winterson constructs this moment of physical intimacy to portray that the notions of embodied

difference used to distinguish human from machine in Billie’s world become irrelevant when

individuals choose to love the Other.

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In ‘Wreck City,’ Winterson opens up further questioning around the capacity for artificially

intelligent agents to possess status as moral beings, and whether authentic human emotion

should be regarded as a prerequisite for determining this potential. The question of whether or

not machines are potentially capable of being regarded as “trustworthy moral agents” (Allen and

Wallach 26) has been theorised in relation to real-world applications as robotic engineers

attempt to develop robots that can successfully negotiate the moral dilemmas necessary for

making important social decisions. Allen and Wallach highlight two dimensions, autonomy and

sensitivity to morally relevant facts, suggesting that in order for intelligent machines to possess

a form of trustworthy morality, they must be receptive to the development of value systems (25).

Spike is designed to think on a level that allows her to make morally sound decisions that

human beings are not capable of making when they are corrupted by greed, power and the

endless push for progress: “I am being designed to make decisions for the betterment of the

human race” (182). In this way, the Robo sapiens offers an alternative solution to decision

making that can take place outside of the political allegiances and confinement to limited belief

and value systems that skew the judgment of human beings. The barman in Wreck City is

sceptical of Spike’s ability to make effective moral choices, as conveyed in his apathetic remark,

“politicians, robots, it makes no difference” (183). However, Spike addresses the fundamental

difference between herself and human beings by drawing attention to her innate political

neutrality.

While at other moments throughout the novel Winterson’s technophobic vision of the

dehumanising consequences of pursuing technological progress is laid bare in unsettling detail,

Spike’s burgeoning consciousness and Billie’s genuine kinship with the robot reflect a far more

harmonious union between human and technology. The depiction of a robot life form that

displays more developed abilities for just decision making, emotional understanding and even

love than the majority of the human population in the novel may not on the surface appear as a

positive statement about humanity’s possible trajectory. However, a tone of cautious optimism

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lies in Winterson’s representation of the capacity for human kinship with machine Others, with

love offered as an antidote to unequal relationships. When Spike asks Billie to define love to

help her understand an abstract noun that suggests the experience of deep human emotion,

Billie’s explanation alludes to the language of ‘the voyage of exploration’ that characterises both

the space and sea ship journeys in ‘Planet Blue’ and ‘Easter Island’: “Maybe it’s recognition,

perhaps discovery, sometimes it’s sacrifice, always it’s treasure. It’s a journey on foot to another

place” (109). This definition—of searching, questing, of finding and being found—suggests that

love is an underlying driving force of both the internal and external exploratory voyages that

feature in the distinct sub-narratives throughout the novel. Spike’s definition of love, “I think it’s

the chance to be human” (110), resonates with Winterson’s personal intentions as an author

preoccupied with writing about the paramount significance of love as a human aspiration: “I

write about love because it’s the most important thing in the world. I write about sex because it

often feels like the most important thing in the world” (Winterson, Gut Symmetries). In this

regard, The Stone Gods is an expression of Winterson’s belief that while social complexities of

sexuality and power significantly influence human experience, central to the paradox of what it

means to be human is the quest for love in its various manifestations.

Conclusion

Classifying The Stone Gods as a work of science fiction is not a straightforward task. Winterson

employs science-fiction tropes of the posthuman in such vastly different ways throughout the

disparate yet connected sections of the novel that a multi-layered critique of its complex and

varied elements is required. The Stone Gods contains clear connections to her other works of

fiction, which are not science fiction. Readers familiar with Winterson’s earlier novels, such as

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Sexing the Cherry (1989), The Passion (1987), Written

on the Body (1992), and The Powerbook (2000), will recognise a range of recurring thematic

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concerns and narrative strategies that speak to her core interests as a feminist author

fascinated by the politics of sex, gender and the body. Winterson’s distinctive style of

experimentation with both discourses of history and postmodern literary devices are present in

The Stone Gods, which in its blend of science fiction, historiographic metafiction, and the

collapsing of discrete spatio-temporal boundaries, contributes to her oeuvre in ways that

continue to challenge the prevailing dominance of patriarchal systems and ideologies of control.

The attitudes towards posthuman evolution in The Stone Gods are varied, at times

tending towards optimism as machine forms of intelligence present a possible solution to

recurring cycles of conflict and violence. Yet the overarching bent of the narrative is towards

pessimism as Winterson constructs visceral and confronting images of the posthuman that

stand as testaments to the darkest dimensions of the human condition. While portrayals of the

relationship between human and machine, via Billie and Spike’s evolving connection, are used

to underscore the power of love to overcome both social and biological barriers, the fusion of

human and technology is repeatedly portrayed as detrimental to both human beings and the

environments they inhabit. In the novel’s grimmest moments of pessimism, visions of

biotechnologies seized to systematically enact man’s most perverse sexual desires, stand

against the obliteration of freedom and morality under rigid totalitarian, dystopian regimes, and

post-apocalyptic nightmares of environmental ruin. From the ravaged landscapes of Planet

Orbus, Planet White and eventually, Planet Blue, to Easter Island and the Dead Forest, The

Stone Gods details the bleakest depictions of ecological disaster at the hands of human greed

and short-sightedness. The propensity for colonising landscapes translates to the colonisation

of bodies in the novel’s posthuman world, with biotechnologies that manipulate the bodies of

women and children to meet normative social ideals, and bodies that are ravaged and infected

by war technologies that represent humanity’s ultimate potential for destruction.

Winterson purposefully employs science fiction as a literary tool to interrogate and revise

ideologies that have shaped relationships between human and Other. In particular, The Stone

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Gods serves as an indictment of the insidious and often violent reach of patriarchal desires as

different forms of authority exercise control over various oppressed minorities: nature, children,

women and robot Others. Representing the devastating implications of patriarchal authorities

being able to colonise the minds and bodies of the Other, intentionally shaping and exploiting

them for their own dark agendas, Winterson’s novel grapples with the dangers of technology

when utilised as a weapon to manipulate and exploit the marginalised. In the case of Orbus’s

women and children, technologies are used to reshape their bodies into the hyperbolised image

of perverse male desires. In the case of Robo sapiens, Spike, technology is used to construct a

mechanical body that can be readily exploited and expended in accordance with the needs and

desires of authorities.

Similar to the portrayals of intentional abuses of technology that enable authorities to

create and exploit entire “subhuman” underclasses in Pure and Gemsigns, Winterson’s novel

presents the malleability of Othered bodies in alignment with the masculine desire to consume

and control as a devastating consequence of posthuman mediation. In this regard, The Stone

Gods offers a confronting example of women’s twenty-first century science fiction that engages

with the politics of embodiment, gender and sexuality in a manner that overtly points to

patriarchal power as a source of recurring injustice, inequality and destruction. Portrayals of the

various abuses of minorities who are objectified by those in power in Winterson’s fictional world,

directly raises the issue of the need for vigilant scrutiny of the ways in which authorities leverage

technology and their underlying motivations for doing so.

Of all of the novels examined in this thesis, The Stone Gods most poignantly presents

complex patterns of authorities who seize technology as a means of inscribing their desires and

agendas onto the bodies of the Other. Indeed, it is only when notions of difference are reframed

by Othered characters themselves within the novel, that divisive ideological and ontological

barriers between human and Other can be overcome. This is a testament to the fictional power

of representations that emphasise the voices and perspectives of the Other as an alternative to

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the often unjust, hierarchical patterns that conventionally dictate relationships between

authorities and individuals. Winterson insists that The Stone Gods is as much a ‘love story’ as it

is a science-fiction quest or a narrative pastiche of destructive human cycles, encouraging

readers to momentarily look past her grim dystopian visions to consider that amidst the

wreckages of death, loss and disaster, love in its diverse manifestations offers a thread of hope

for humanity’s redemption and the dismantling of unequal human/Other relations.

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CONCLUSION

Women’s science fiction: a tool for revisioning the relationship between human and Other

In order for us to adapt to this strange new world, we’re going to need more than

scientific reports and military policy. We’re going to need new ideas. We’re going to need

new myths and new stories, a new conceptual understanding of reality, and a new

relationship to the deep polyglot traditions of human culture . . . We need a new vision of

who ‘we’ are.

Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

Simultaneously, we string together one moment with the next, we connect important

moments to our identity and personal history, and we revise our narratives concerning

others as we continue to interact further with them. To be human is to narrate; hence,

any attempt to explore the human and its limits must necessarily consider narrative.

Alva Miller, Preface to Exploring the Limits of the Human Through Science Fiction

When I first embarked on my investigation of the five novels considered in this thesis, I did so

with what I thought was an open mind. However, in hindsight I held strong assumptions

regarding what I was going to discover about the politics of the posthuman. I went into the

project armed with Donna Haraway’s manifesto and other conceptions of posthumanity that

presented it as an emancipatory state of being. While at first I desperately wanted my corpus to

fit the thesis that being posthuman was a transgressive, enabling or transcendent experience,

the novels took me in very different directions. The narratives I encountered confronted me with

visions of dramatically different posthuman subjects, each in their own way downtrodden,

exploited or Othered. In each of the novel’s worlds, being posthuman entails subjection and

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exclusion. Posthuman individuals in these texts struggle as a consequence of their status as

hybrid, spliced, fused or deformed beings. They are frequently dehumanised and perceived as

subhuman in their deviation from societal norms. I realised that in the twenty-first century,

science fiction is being deployed as a literary tool to revise familiar narratives that have shaped

human/Other relationships. While the novels in my corpus utilise the posthuman to create new

conceptualisations, stories and visions with the aim of redefining who and what counts as

human, the pictures they create are far from liberatory.

Without question, we need more sophisticated cultural and political tools to unpick the

threads that continue to justify the hegemonic rationale of Western society. As shown by the

novels in this thesis, science fiction can be such a tool. Literary critic Marianne Hopman calls for

humanities scholars to embrace the challenge and opportunity to “draw on the tools of our trade

– the details of philological analysis and the minutiae of close reading – to illuminate, rather than

escape from, the project of defining a new humanism” (61). Examining women’s twenty-first-

century science fiction in light of posthuman ideologies and images has engaged me in a

process of scrutinising narrow paradigms of the human and speculating about possible futures

in which conventional human limits can be tested and even reconstructed anew. Gerard Alva

Miller asserts that the speculative nature of the science-fiction genre enables us to explore

alternative systems, bodies and identities beyond the limits of our current humanity: “More than

any genre, science fiction calls us to imagine new ways of theorizing, philosophizing, criticizing,

and living. Science fiction points the way beyond the limits of the human. It allows us to begin

imagining how we might slip the bonds and constraints that limit us and embrace new orders of

identity and existence” (Preface). Indeed, science fiction allows us to imagine the beyond:

beyond our current societies and economic systems, and beyond our current body and identity

taxonomies. In other words, science fiction lets us explore the limits of the human and what

might possibly lie outside of them if we allow our minds to stretch beyond existing social and

cultural constructs.

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Throughout this project, moments of optimism have led me to consider that the bleakest

depictions of posthuman subjects draw our awareness to dangerous, divisive ideologies that

prescribe sameness as the ultimate social aim. However, comprehending intricate relationships

between the belief systems, grand narratives, institutions and technologies that shape our

bodies, minds, experiences and identities is a complicated task. In analysing the work of Meyer,

Pearson, Baggott, Saulter and Winterson, I have come to view science fiction as not only a tool

for deepening our understanding of these complexities, but also for producing new dynamics

between human and Other that encourage us to dismantle elements of the status quo that

perpetuate injustice and inequality. Science fiction offers a space in which we can explore how

hierarchies function in negotiating differences between human and Other, and point to the

glaring reality that in both literary and real worlds, “the ‘human’ is not a neutral term but rather a

hierarchical one that indexes access to privileges and entitlements” (Braidotti, Posthuman

Critical Theory 15). Female science-fiction authors have a key role to play in the posthuman

project of exposing often tacit and imperceptible political and ontological boundaries between

human and Other. While in the real world marginalised groups are often denied the voice and

agency to share their experiences, fiction becomes a platform for empowering these oppressed

minorities. Science-fiction critic Cat Yampell asserts the value of the genre in “representing

voices of those who cannot speak for themselves as well as the voice of the dominant,

speciesist, Western, patriarchal majority” (207). A primary recurring feature of the novels

examined here is their focus on enabling readers to observe the world from the perspective of

the marginalised.

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The posthuman imaginary

The science-fiction novels discussed in this thesis engage with images of the posthuman to

explore the politics of difference, technological abuses and the ethical concerns associated with

them, and the experiences of fragmentation and fusion. All of my chosen novels call for us to

recognise complex power dynamics at play in the relationships between individuals and differing

forms of authority. Each of the novels offers a distinctive answer to the question of how to

determine who counts as human, depicting how, under regimes of political control that endorse

a dialectic of biological supremacy and inferiority, certain bodies are inevitably constructed as

deviant. Embodied difference plays a significant role in determining which bodies are deemed to

be human, and which are excluded from this intentionally discrete category. Authors such as

Meyer, Baggott, and Saulter use science-fiction narratives to spotlight the constructed nature of

ideologies and systems that are used to marginalise particular bodies and identities. Readers

are encouraged to consider how leaders of the fictional societies presented purposefully

promote the idealisation of particular human characteristics to ensure that Othered populations

remain exploitable or expendable. We see that reinforcing biological or embodied differences

between human and Other is central to the political agendas of the powerful who benefit from

“categories marked by exclusionary practices” (Ferrando 20). The authors in my corpus depict

situations in which authorities leverage narrow definitions of the human to exploit entire

underclasses of people. These portrayals are made all the more compelling by each author’s

choice to emphasise the individual plights of posthuman beings who are the victims of these

practices. Pure and Gemsigns, moreover, dramatise the conflict between victims and

perpetrators by explicitly inviting us to interrogate the political motivations of antagonists like

Ellery Willux and Zavcka Klist. In highlighting such patterns of Othering, grounded in

intentionally constructed social hierarchies in which the wretches and gems are deemed inferior,

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these novels illustrate how those in power reject affinities with the Other while reinforcing

ideologies that frame “‘difference’ as pejoration” (Braidotti, The Posthuman 17).

Alongside the politics of difference, another key aspect of the posthuman imaginary

depicted in contemporary women’s science fiction deals with the intended and unintended side

effects of technological experimentation on bodies, landscapes and societies. The novels

examined here explore humanity’s potential to exploit posthuman technologies to inflict violence

and destruction, as well as to remould human bodies and landscapes at will. Contemporary

women’s science fiction provides a platform for questioning scientific authority and portraying

the ravages wrought by technological abuse. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Mads Rosendahl

Thomsen and Jacob Wamberg have identified what they call a “schism between technophilia

and technophobia” (10) that speaks to society’s conflicting attitudes towards technology—while

some people experience strongly technophobic fears, others express technophilic enthusiasm.

Daniel Dinello highlights science fiction’s tendency to represent the “transformation into the

posthuman as the horrific harbinger of the long twilight and decline of the human species” and

to express “a technophobic fear of losing our human identity, our freedom, our emotions, our

values, and our lives to machines” (2). While the novels to which Dinello refers often feature

technology running rampant in the form of “rampaging robots” and “killer clones” (2), the

depiction of terrifying technological developments is certainly present in my corpus.

However, in contemporary women’s science-fiction narratives, attitudes towards the

uses and misuses of technology are often more complex, ambiguous, conflicting, and at times

contradictory. In several of the novels analysed, such as Cinder, The Adoration of Jenna Fox,

Gemsigns and The Stone Gods, it is not always obvious whether technology is being

demonised, as they present ambivalent attitudes towards posthuman experimentation. In other

instances, it is made clearly apparent that readers should register particular technological

abuses perpetrated by certain characters as alarming and egregious. Pure, for instance, clearly

condemns the Dome authorities’ utilisation of technology to inflict violence and destruction on

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both bodies and landscapes. Similarly, Gemsigns’ devastating portrait of the suffering inflicted

on individual gems by biotech corporations makes the novel’s rejection of technological abuse

patently clear. The matter is not so straightforward, however, in Gemsigns, which at the same

time presents Aryel Morningstar’s spliced embodiment as a potentially enabling development.

Such ambivalence towards technological advancement is also evident in The Stone Gods,

where Winterson depicts technology both as the possible saviour of a self-destructive humanity

and as a tool for exploiting and destroying the Other. On one hand, her Robo sapiens character,

Spike, is heralded by Orbus authorities, and by the narrative, as a form of posthuman life that

can make complex, rational decisions on behalf of humanity in order to avoid an inevitable

trajectory of destruction. Yet, the novel also depicts the wreckage of worlds repeatedly cast into

devastation by mass-scale technological abuse. The novel presents technology as a tool that

can be exercised for both positive/restorative or negative/destructive ends, and suggests that

ultimately, in a posthuman world, we must consider both the benefits and threats it produces.

Increasingly, as the novels in my corpus attest, the genre of science fiction is being used

to confront the dangers of sustaining a nature/culture dichotomy that positions the natural world

as inferior to human culture. In the Anthropocene, nature is objectified and commodified as a

consequence of its presumed Otherness. Through depictions of landscapes in states of post-

apocalyptic ruin and advanced technocentric societies that alienate humanity from nature, the

women’s science-fiction narratives I have examined reveal the potential consequences of

technological abuses on the environments we inhabit. In particular, Pure and The Stone Gods

provide fictional space for examining the attitudes and values that permit nature to be Othered

and destroyed either in service of humanity, or because it holds no obvious utilitarian value for

humans.

The novels I have analysed depict complicated relationships between technology, social

engineering and the destruction of the ‘natural’ human body. Intentional technological abuses

that rupture the integrity of the human body in the service of constructing unjust hierarchical

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societies are portrayed as a devastating development for both Pure’s wretches and Gemsigns’

gems. Baggott utilises the figure of the fused hybrid, and Saulter the figure of the genetically

engineered splice, to interrogate the ways in which authorities intentionally manipulate

biotechnologies to produce bodies that suit the needs of their respective societies. Gemsigns

features graphic depictions of scientific experimentation, as the biotech companies test the

limits of the human genome to produce highly selective combinations of human and Other

designed for specific social purposes. That they do so without regard for the welfare of their

posthuman ‘specimens’ is depicted as an egregious abuse of power. These fictional scenarios

require us to condemn the manipulation of biosciences that treat people as objects, stripping

them of control over how their bodies are used and for what purposes. While these authors

employ different posthuman tropes, both novels depict how science is utilised by those in power

with the intention of creating populations that will inevitably be physically and biologically deviant

from the socially accepted norm, and therefore can be treated as inferior and accordingly

exploited.

Employing the power of narrative to insist on the need for developed moral and ethical

codes that limit the potential for scientific and technological abuse is a crucial project of the

authors examined in this thesis. These texts each suggest that posthuman ethics entails the

need to conceive of the relationships between human and Other in terms of interconnectedness

rather than division or hierarchy. This posthuman aspiration to dismantle the concept of the

Other extends not only to relationships between humans and nonhumans, but also to aspects of

human identity that have been perceived as separate: mind, body, consciousness and spirit.

Patricia MacCormack defines the ethics of the posthuman as “activist, adaptive and creative

interaction which avoids claims to overarching moral structures” (Posthuman Ethics,

Introduction). She further states that “inherent in thinking [about] posthuman ethics is the status

of bodies as the site of lives inextricable from philosophy, thought, experiments in being and

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fantasies of the future” (Posthuman Ethics, Introduction), an assertion suggestive of the role that

science fiction can play in speculating our way to an ethics of the posthuman.

Lippert-Rasmussen et al. assert that technological advances are “the driving force

behind the agenda of bioethics and the posthuman horizon but the numerous uses and side-

effects are so far-reaching that they affect almost every discipline - and with questions that can

be answered from very different angles” (9). Contemporary ethical issues are explored in my

selected novels as the authors each construct scenarios that display posthuman technologies

being utilised in vastly different ways to “test the limits of what is commonly considered ethical”

(Lippert-Rasmussen, et al. 8). In The Adoration of Jenna Fox, posthuman ethics of embodiment

are engaged explicitly through the voice of Allys and her call for stronger policing of the extent to

which human bodies should be replaced or interfaced with artificial prostheses. Jenna’s

existence as a ninety-percent-artificial cyborg—the living embodiment of an extreme challenge

to the idea of the ‘natural’ human—raises a pronounced ethical conflict between humanist and

posthumanist proponents in the novel’s society. To Jenna’s parents, at least, it is completely

permissible for the artificial to replace the natural if it means saving their daughter’s life. For

Pure’s Ellery Willux, it is permissible to augment the human body with the aim of enhancing it

and to destroy entire populations and environments in order to fulfil a radical social vision. The

scope of the ethical questions raised within each of my selected novels indicates that

developing a set of ethics suitable for resolving the problems depicted in each of the posthuman

worlds is a complex and multifaceted task.

Alongside the ethical concerns surrounding technological intervention, the experiences

of fusion and fragmentation are integral to the posthuman imaginary displayed in my corpus. In

the novels I examine, fusion and fragmentation occurs on a conceptual level, as well as at the

levels of character and setting. Conceptually, the novels challenge humanist notions of

normative embodiment and the presumed integrity of the ‘natural’ human body by presenting

alternative forms of fragmented, hybrid or ‘deviant’ embodiment. The experience of fragmented

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subjectivity is portrayed throughout the novels as deeply connected to living in a posthuman

body that has been cast as ‘deviant.’ Characters like Cinder, Jenna Fox, and Pure’s Pressia, for

example, feel torn between seemingly disparate identities as they find themselves in a liminal

space between human and Other. The most complex portrayal of fragmented subjectivity is

evident in The Adoration of Jenna Fox, as Jenna’s subjectivity is split between her old/human

and new/posthuman identities, a dynamic that is complicated even further with the discovery

that a backup copy of her ‘mind’ exists as stored consciousness. Presented with the choice to

disregard the ‘old’ and embrace a new, uncertain and fragmentary identity, Jenna consciously

severs ties to her pre-accident self and chooses to accept her hybrid self. In their own distinctive

ways, these young adult narratives emphasise the intensely personal process of attempting to

reconcile fragmented aspects of the self, only for each character to recognise that this is a futile

aspiration. Reflective of Judith Butler’s reading of Braidotti’s posthumanist aspirations,

embracing fragmentation to affirm hybridity, plurality or multiplicity as an alternative form of

subjectivity (Butler 37) is a crucial rite of passage for Cinder, Jenna and Pressia.

All of the novels examined in this thesis give fictional space to the fragmented

subjectivity of the Other: all of them speak from the place of disenfranchised subjects who must

negotiate life, relationships, and the foreignness of their own bodies. In empathetically

portraying the suffering produced by the association between embodied deviance and prevailing

injustices, the authors meet Sherryl Vint’s call for utilising science fiction narratives to urge for

greater social responsibility towards Othered individuals (8). As characters face judgement,

exclusion, subjection and violence as a consequence of their posthuman embodiment, readers

observe the psychological, physical and emotional consequences faced by individuals whose

bodies are technologically altered or created to meet restrictive social ideals.

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Narratives of affinity and difference

While there are many affinities and differences between the novels discussed in this thesis,

what emerges most strongly from them as a group is their concern with how complex

relationships between embodiment, subjectivity and the politics of difference play key roles in

defining both human and Other. In Meyer’s Cinder, for instance, we see that in New Beijing,

humans view the cyborg population as subhuman. In this posthuman world, an individual must

be entirely biologically natural in order for their humanity to be recognised. By denying the

humanity of cyborgs, authorities in Meyer’s fictional society are able to justify the use of cyborgs

in dangerous scientific experiments. Those in power seize on embodied differences from

‘normal’ human biology to exclude, enslave, and if necessary, sacrifice an entire population. As

readers, we experience the entire narrative through the eyes of a disenfranchised cyborg,

Cinder, who suffers both physical and psychological trauma as a result of her society’s selective

definitions of the human. This perspective generates a sympathetic portrayal of a marginalised

posthuman individual in order to draw our attention to the damaging effects of oppressive

systems that hierarchise categories of identity.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox raises another set of questions as Pearson interrogates how

humanity might be defined in relation to the machine Other. Jenna’s recurring existential

questions impel us to consider where we can appropriately locate human essence. If it does not

reside in our physical body, as Matthew Fox argues, then is it truly located within our

consciousness? Or is it located in a soul? Contained primarily within the microcosm of Jenna’s

immediate family and close friends, Pearson’s narrative focuses on Jenna’s personal quest to

define herself as human despite her artificial body and ‘inserted’ mind. It is interesting that even

though as readers we are encouraged to question whether Jenna can rightly be placed within

the category of the human, the first-person narration humanises her to the extent that we can in

many ways perceive her as a ‘normal’ human teenage girl—with anxieties familiar to many

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young adult readers. Yet in Jenna’s society, predominantly artificial individuals are not yet

legally recognised as human and so her journey towards accepting her cyborg nature is

complicated by the threat her existence poses to social order. In contrast to the other novels

examined, Pearson’s narrative raises the relationship between science and spirituality in

questioning what it means to be human. On a personal level, for Jenna to define herself as

human she must affirm her spiritual belief in the existence of the soul. Rather than coming to

terms with her human/machine identity by relying on scientific reasoning or resolving

philosophical quandaries, religious or pre-humanist faith in the soul as the storehouse of human

essence offers Jenna both a way out of the mind/body dualism and a way to affirm her ‘human’

consciousness.

Offering an entirely different exploration of how to define humanity, Baggott’s Pure

presents various complex patterns of Othering operating both inside and outside the Dome.

While on one level the narrative depicts how Dome authorities leverage narrow conceptions of

the human to position the unblemished ‘human’ Pures as superior to the fused ‘subhuman’

wretches, it also reveals that such distinctions are merely superficial. Pure, like Cinder, deals

with the problem of an entire population being relegated to a subservient underclass. However,

Pure’s representation of how its underclass of wretches contests their subhuman status and

cope with the consequent struggles is far more complicated. The novel presents a spectrum of

posthuman embodiment that distinguishes between human and Other in the post-apocalyptic

world outside the Dome. The perspectives of focal characters like Pressia and El Capitan reveal

that their survival in an unpredictable posthuman landscape depends on being able to

distinguish between the more benign forms of wretches, and those that are dangerous because

they have lost any conception of empathy. In these terms, being human depends on displaying

certain emotional, intellectual and behavioural characteristics. The novel further complicates the

relationship between human and Other through the revelation that the Pures are not in fact the

embodiments of the unblemished, unfused ‘pure’ ideal, safely protected inside the Dome.

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Rather, they are technologically and socially manipulated to the extent that, ironically, their

bodies and minds have become radically deviant from their presumably ‘natural’ pre-Detonation

states. In constructing these complex narrative layers, Baggott’s own posthuman vision

achieves a somewhat paradoxical outcome: while Pure interrogates humanist categories of

identity that produce dangerous social hierarchies in the aim of dismantling them, at the same

time the narrative upholds the category of the human as worthy of preserving.

As with Baggott’s wretches, Saulter’s Gemsigns establishes that the ideology that

‘different equals subhuman’ is responsible for the oppression of the gems as an underclass. In

both Pure and Gemsigns, this social equation is problematised by the revelation that the

dominant ‘human’ populations, the Pures and the norms, are also posthuman. Saulter’s

Gemsigns also engages in the question of how to define the human, via discourses of race and

monstrosity and the rendering of a posthuman population produced specifically to serve the

dominant ‘human’ citizenry. The narrative underscores how corporate, political and scientific

agendas have coalesced to construct a highly exploitative social system, this time grounded in

the belief that the gems’ technologically altered biologies exclude them from humanity.

The revelation in Gemsigns that behavioural and genetic anomalies are evident in norms

and gems alike prompts us to consider that using definitions of the human that preclude certain

groups on the basis of particular differences is at best a narrow and misguided rationale, and at

worst a dangerous and deliberate practice used by authorities to sustain systemic oppression.

Ultimately, the outcomes of both Gemsigns and Pure portray narrow definitions of the human as

erroneous, pernicious tools used to divisive ends, and convey the message that restrictive

paradigms of human normalcy must be challenged and overcome. Returning to Elana Gomel’s

contention, as discussed in my Introduction, that the challenge for authors is to find artistic ways

to portray the ongoing issue of how to deal with the “not human” (Science Fiction, Alien

Encounters 3-4), it is apparent that both Baggott and Saulter have depicted their respective

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Others in ways that condemn authorities who intentionally reinforce patterns of difference as a

divisive political tool, while celebrating difference as an integral aspect of being human.

Winterson’s narrative strategy for portraying the exploitation of the cyborg Other in The

Stone Gods is far more graphic and confronting than the depictions offered by Meyer and

Pearson, and extends Baggott’s and Saulter’s interrogation of whether body shape truly

determines the human. As the narrative progresses, Winterson’s construction of Spike’s

evolving capacity for complex emotions, connection with others, and eventually love, leads us to

question the ethics and logic underlying the Orbus authorities’ denial of her subjectivity and

agency. We are guided to perceive the assumed differences between human and machine as

arbitrary, as the cyborg appears more capable of displaying typically ‘human’ qualities, such as

empathy, reason and foresight, than her human counterparts. While this is just one thread of

The Stone Gods’s overall narrative, Spike’s comments on love, especially, invite deep

consideration of how humanist patterns of identifying difference to further reinforce the

boundaries between human and Other can be gradually dismantled as deeper affinities are

fostered. Of all the novels examined in this thesis, Winterson’s novel is the only one to extend

an explicit call for symbiosis between human and Other.

The evolving field of posthumanism encompasses works of science fiction that utilise

imaginative and representational possibilities to explore a range of varying moral questions and

standpoints relating to posthuman evolution. Ultimately, the narratives we read are critical to

challenging our assumptions, biases and ignorance. They prompt us to reevaluate our minds,

bodies, and identities and how these are influenced by technological mediation. Certainly, as we

encounter imagined posthuman futures, science-fiction narratives aid us in sorting through

which scenarios are ethically right or wrong, and help us to construct our own distinctive ethical

views. While utilising science-fiction narratives in dramatically different ways to portray complex

relationships between human and posthuman Others, Meyer, Pearson, Baggott, Saulter and

Winterson all engage in an ongoing discussion about our evolving definitions of what it means to

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be human. These women writers have seized on science fiction as a tool to draw our awareness

to the complex politics of difference as they relate to our bodies, identities and the environments

we inhabit. In doing so, they construct narratives that are integral to the posthuman project of

revising outdated cultural scripts and giving voice to the marginalised.

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