Works Cited

Giovannelli, Laura. “Blackbeard and the Post-Anthropocene Humanoids. Tracing the Post/Transhuman in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy.” Between, vol. 12, no. 24, 2022, pp. 291-311. Hunter OneSearch, https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/5127.

In her essay, Giovannelli evaluates the Crakers’ anthropological and zoological dimensions through post-humanist and trans-humanist lens. She argues that Crake’s engineering of these humanoids and their development of culture represents the failure to remove humanity via science. Humanity’s subsequent kinship with the pigoons in MaddAddam contradicts earlier critics’ demarcation between humans and nature (“multispecies”), placing the Crakers in the liminal space in between, although leaning more towards “the human” rather than “the posthuman”, thereby providing a clear identity between human and animal. 

Heise, Ursula K. “The Android and the Animal.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 2, 2010, pp. 503-510. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25614291. 

Heise’s essay argues that recent science fiction’s assessment of the boundary between the android and the animal reaffirms humanist thought, despite technology and nature in science fiction existing in a posthumanist world. In Oryx and Crake, in particular, there is a tendency to return to the human essence despite the science that attempts to remove it. This essay provides a litany of science fiction novels exhibiting the persistence of humanism within a posthumanist world. 

Kozioł, Sławomir. “From Sausages to Hoplites of Ham and Beyond: The Status of Genetically Modified Pigs in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy.” Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature, vol. 54, no. 3, 2018 Summer, pp. 261-295. Modern Language Association, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=4d1eded4-edae-3f55-b2c0-1d0e0ba9082a.

The genetic engineering on which Kozioł focuses in this paper are the pigoons instead of the Crakers and argues that their subordination to humans (“the exploitable other”), despite sharing genes and exhibiting rational agency, upholds human exceptionalism and is unavoidable according to human history. Kozioł invokes both historical methodologies and social contract theory to examine the hypocrisy of human exceptionalism and identify weaknesses of posthumanism in the MaddAddam trilogy. 

Schmeink, Lars. “The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal.” Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, 2016, pp. 71-118. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps33cv.6.

In his research, Schmeink compares how the MaddAddam trilogy and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl depict how hypercapitalism and environmental collapse challenge humanness. He questions human authority by focusing on the harmony between genetically-engineered species and nature, with the former still being able to achieve traits of “the human”. Rather than calculating how all other beings fit into “the human”– a humanist perspective–, he extends this reckoning of where humans fit among other intelligent life to the human. 

Schmeink, Lars. “Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity.” Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, 2016, pp. 18-70. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps33cv.5. 

Schmeink traces the origins and development of science fiction through historicist methods. He also gives extensive explanations of humanism and anti-humanism which are useful in explaining post-humanist theory. 

Yoo, Jihun. “Transhumanist Impulse, Utopian Vision, and Reversing Dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 114, no. 4, 2019, pp. 662-681. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.114.4.0662. 

Yoo identifies Oryx and Crake and Octavia Butler’s Dawn as novels reflecting human anxieties about scientific and technological progress and the transhumanist impulse and utopian vision that originates from such progress. He focuses on the tension between the attempts at human perfection and utopia through technology and its devastating ramifications such as eugenics. Yoo resolves that Oryx and Crake pushes the idea that communities based on kinship and not utopian visions are what define post-apocalyptic, post-human futures. 

Research Question: How does Atwood’s depiction of genetically-engineered hybrids assess the boundary between “the human” and “the animal”?

*****

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004.

Giovannelli, Laura. “Blackbeard and the Post-Anthropocene Humanoids. Tracing the Post/Transhuman in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy.” Between, vol. 12, no. 24, 2022, pp. 291-311. Hunter OneSearch, https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/5127.

Heise, Ursula K. “The Android and the Animal.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 2, 2010, pp. 503-510. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25614291.

Kozioł, Sławomir. “From Sausages to Hoplites of Ham and Beyond: The Status of Genetically Modified Pigs in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy.” Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature, vol. 54, no. 3, 2018 Summer, pp. 261-295. Modern Language Association, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=4d1eded4-edae-3f55-b2c0-1d0e0ba9082a.

Schmeink, Lars. “The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal.” Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, 2016, pp. 71-118. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps33cv.6.

Schmeink, Lars. “Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity.” Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, 2016, pp. 18-70. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps33cv.5.

Yoo, Jihun. “Transhumanist Impulse, Utopian Vision, and Reversing Dystopia in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 114, no. 4, 2019, pp. 662-681. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.114.4.0662. 

*****

All of the papers listed here were sourced from three (Hunter OneSearch, JSTOR, and International MLA Bibliography) of the five research engines we looked through during our library visit. I found that while the International MLA Bibliography did not produce as many results as I hoped, it did produce papers that were not on OneSearch or JSTOR (or at least the first five pages of those two databases). I decided to abandon “Oryx and Crake” as a search term and instead opted for “Maddaddam” because it yielded more results. I also included “transhumanist/ism” as a search term alongside “posthumanist/ism” as search terms. I also found that databases were more receptive of the terms “genetic engineering” alongside “science fiction” in terms of producing literature-focused paper compared to “bioengineering”. Three of these sources I found during our library session and using some of the terms suggested during that session such as “Anthropocene”.

“You had to endure something yourself before it touched you.” – The Birds*, Daphne du Maurier 

Daphne du Maurier’s take on birdkind in The Birds greatly diverges from the manner in which Offill presents the waning of these winged creatures in Weather. Du Maurier’s birds are powerful. The protagonist, his family, and their community are at the mercy of the flocks that peck at the wood of their doors and at the bodies of those unlucky enough to be outdoors during an attack. On the other hand, Offill’s birds are never really there. Lizzie says their populations are getting smaller (Offill 95), but there is never a moment where she actually observes them in her present. In both texts, however, humans exhibit an aversion to avians and this aversion, in turn, reflects the vulnerability of mankind in the face of nature. 

“Feathered rats” is what Lizzie suspects the planners of the spiked fence call birds, spikes to deliver the message that they are not welcome at the playground (Offill 89). And the birds do dwindle, not because of the spikes, but most likely because of the climate crisis that permeates Lizzie’s (and the rest of mankind’s) life. These spikes seem insignificant compared to the scale of the deterioration of nature itself.  And that’s why this disappearance of birds carries nearly the same horrifying effect that the thousands of congregated birds achieve in The Birds. Whether or not there are thousands or none, the human situation is the worst for it. The wood of Nat Hocken’s house in The Birds is slowly pecked apart through wave by wave of avian attacks and the lack of attacks (or just of non-violent birds) in Weather signifies the greater environmental catastrophe that looms over the future of the world. 

While Du Maurier’s short story is primarily an allegory of post-World War II anxieties in England (evoking such memories as the Blitz), the scale of the Anthropocene underscores the nature of the birds. Nat wonders “how many million of years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind with the deft precision of machines” (Du Maurier 100). Birds have had hundreds of millions of years to evolve from dinosaurs into these smaller-than-human creatures that can still bring terror and death to a seaside town. And yet human hubris does not consider them the height of evolution because “we have chosen to privilege certain things above other things” (Offill 46). And with all the strategies of escape mentioned by Lizzie (to New Zealand, Argentina, and Mars), one would think that perhaps the evolution needed for escape are wings and if you’re a bird, “why be a bird in a cage” (Offill 108). This is not to say humans should grow wings, rather we should make kin, as Haraway suggests and develop mutualism in the way of the “moth in Madagascar that drinks the tears of sleeping birds” (Offill 67). The only reason Nat makes this evolutionary observation about birds is because “you had to endure something yourself before it touched you” (Du Maurier 68), but to extend kinship before disaster strikes is perhaps the path away from the woeful ending of The Birds. The world, Lizzie’s world, may not end in an onslaught of beaks and feathers, but nothing lasts forever and “an exception is made for the earth and the sky” (Offill 99). 

*Page numbers taken from Du Maurier’s short story collection “Don’t Look Now”.

How does Margaret Atwood depict genetically-engineered hybrids to assess the line between “the animal” and “the human”? (Aiming for a posthumanist approach.)

    The effect of the anecdotal style Jenny Offill employs in Weather is the brief passage of a period in Lizzie’s life completed in 201 pages. These anecdotes identify hyperspecific moments in Lizzie’s life from a dinner she shares with her family to the instance one of the moms at school smiled at her. They’re mundane and small bits, but they make up a life and a person. And Lizzie’s interactions with several background characters (here, I’ve defined “background characters” as everyone, but her family: Ben, Eli, Henry, Catherine, and maybe Sylvia), both named and unnamed, give an insight to the perspective with which she leads her life and, in turn, with how she considers the climate crisis. 

    Lizzie is always accommodating and mostly complaisant. This trait is most evident when she decides to continue being Mr. Jimmy’s customer because she fears she is his only customer left, even when it is heaps cheaper to take the bus (20). Then again when she purchases the cheapest hammer in a hardware store in order to escape the owner’s exaltation of the independent hardware shop (56-7). Maybe she just really wanted to escape, but she didn’t really need the hammer. And again when she takes an expensive car service to be on time for dinner with her brother (not a background character, but still a good example of her consideration), who himself was late and drenched in rain (5). All these deeds are testament to her self-lessness or perhaps evidence of her slight timidity, but are overall significant to her eventual task of responding to Sylvia’s emails. First, she’s aware of the correct etiquette such as not asking, “Have you tried chamomile tea?” to a depressed person (11), which would probably result in a PR nightmare for Sylvia. Second, even the critical moment in which she decided to work for Sylvia is characterized by Lizzie’s selflessness–she sees that Sylvia is tired and decides she wants to help her (27).

    There are also several instances in which Lizzie acknowledges some people on the street to whom she responds with humor. For instance, an idealist lectures her about her ham sandwich and the conscious experiences of animals, but she eats the sandwich anyways (16). Then again when she and Ben are asked if they knew that Jesus was Jewish, to which they respond with a short “Yup” (34). And again when she gives some coins instead of the usual dollar to a woman outside the library and “god blesses [her] anyways” (51). Being able to find humor and to present an even-tempered attitude is key to responding to emails sent to a podcast attracting doomsdayers. I would argue further that this exposure to quite zealous end-timers will eventually help Lizzie to face the end of the world through the tragicomic mode. She already shares early on that “Environmentalists are so dreary” (51). While I don’t expect her to be the archetypal hero of the world, I don’t believe that Offill is creating a hero, simply showing how the climate crisis makes appearances throughout people’s lives. It may actually have a larger presence in Lizzie’s life because of the nature of her side hustle with Sylvia, but for the regular person, climate change is something that pops up on the news or through the window during an autumnal snow. Life continues all around filled with mundane tasks, sometimes-interesting people, and occasional exclamations of zeal until, of course, the end times come.