An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS
This paper examines, through the lenses of agential realism, the uncanny sense of posthumanist relational subjectivity that Winterson’s utopia evokes through the twofold romantic encounter between female scientist Billie Crusoe and humanized sherobot Spike. This same-sex cross-species futuristic lov...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
2018-07-01
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| Series: | Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory |
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| Online Access: | http://www.metacriticjournal.com/article/93/an-agential-realist-approach-to-posthumanist-relational-subjectivity-in-jeanette-wintersons-the-stone-gods |
| _version_ | 1819162303797395456 |
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| author | Alina Preda |
| author_facet | Alina Preda |
| author_sort | Alina Preda |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This paper examines, through the lenses of agential realism, the uncanny sense of posthumanist relational subjectivity that Winterson’s utopia evokes through the twofold romantic encounter between female scientist Billie Crusoe and humanized sherobot Spike. This same-sex cross-species futuristic love affair that develops across two different space-times succeeds in blurring the boundaries between humans and machines, thus prompting readers to overcome their anthropocentric worldview and to abandon the deep yet narrow concern for the moral and cognitive implications of the humans’ fate at the end of the de-centring process brought about by the posthuman turn, urging them to consider, instead, more significant and wider issues such as accountability and responsibility. Thus, it can be viewed as a fictional narrative embodiment of Karen Barad’s theoretical reconfiguration of materiality as discursive and of performativity as a dynamic process of constraining iterative intra-actions rather than of determining interactions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-22T17:26:06Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-326164c0856146eea0ff429c2d1ccb2c |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2457-8827 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-22T17:26:06Z |
| publishDate | 2018-07-01 |
| publisher | Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory |
| spelling | doaj.art-326164c0856146eea0ff429c2d1ccb2c2022-12-21T18:18:42ZengBabes-Bolyai University, Cluj-NapocaMetacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory2457-88272018-07-0141223810.24193/mjcst.2018.5.02An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODSAlina Preda0"Babeș-Bolyai” University, Faculty of LettersThis paper examines, through the lenses of agential realism, the uncanny sense of posthumanist relational subjectivity that Winterson’s utopia evokes through the twofold romantic encounter between female scientist Billie Crusoe and humanized sherobot Spike. This same-sex cross-species futuristic love affair that develops across two different space-times succeeds in blurring the boundaries between humans and machines, thus prompting readers to overcome their anthropocentric worldview and to abandon the deep yet narrow concern for the moral and cognitive implications of the humans’ fate at the end of the de-centring process brought about by the posthuman turn, urging them to consider, instead, more significant and wider issues such as accountability and responsibility. Thus, it can be viewed as a fictional narrative embodiment of Karen Barad’s theoretical reconfiguration of materiality as discursive and of performativity as a dynamic process of constraining iterative intra-actions rather than of determining interactions.http://www.metacriticjournal.com/article/93/an-agential-realist-approach-to-posthumanist-relational-subjectivity-in-jeanette-wintersons-the-stone-godsagential realismperformativitynon-anthropocentric standpointsposthumanist relational subjectivity |
| spellingShingle | Alina Preda An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory agential realism performativity non-anthropocentric standpoints posthumanist relational subjectivity |
| title | An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS |
| title_full | An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS |
| title_fullStr | An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS |
| title_full_unstemmed | An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS |
| title_short | An Agential Realist Approach to Posthumanist Relational Subjectivity in Jeanette Winterson’s THE STONE GODS |
| title_sort | agential realist approach to posthumanist relational subjectivity in jeanette winterson s the stone gods |
| topic | agential realism performativity non-anthropocentric standpoints posthumanist relational subjectivity |
| url | http://www.metacriticjournal.com/article/93/an-agential-realist-approach-to-posthumanist-relational-subjectivity-in-jeanette-wintersons-the-stone-gods |
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