Dehumanizing Discourses: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy on Post-Humans
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Keywords

Margaret Atwood
istoty nie-ludzkie
postkolonializm
dzieciństwo
MaddAddam
animalizacja

How to Cite

Poręba, I. (2023). Dehumanizing Discourses: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy on Post-Humans. Przestrzenie Teorii, (39), 195–219. https://doi.org/10.14746/pt.2023.39.10

Abstract

This paper examines four discursive strategies: colonizing, animalizing, infantalizing and (plant) vegetative that characters in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy use to name the Crakers, post-humans with modified DNA structure. In discussing them, I expose a dehumanizing effect this seemingly neutral processes of naming and describing have. The interpretative findings discussed in this paper constitute a response to largely anthropocentrically oriented extensive criticism on Atwood’s writing. By questioning the neutrality of the narrative through a postcolonial reading of the trilogy, I argue that MaddAddam challenges the divisions between human and non-human. The paper investigates whether these dehumanizing discursive tactics of animalization, colonization, infantilism or vegetation, which are fundamentally oppressive, can become a means of resistance.

https://doi.org/10.14746/pt.2023.39.10
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