Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Many scholars of the contemporaneity argue that we currently inhabit the Anthropocene era – the name of the historical moment in which the human has become a geological force capable of affecting all life on the planet. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood offers an insightful depiction of this theme throughout her post-apocalyptic and dystopian trilogy MaddAddam. Taking these facts into account, my proposal consists of offering some reflections on the notion of the posthuman. In doing so, I rely mostly on Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman. In this publication, she highlights that the posthuman condition introduces a qualitative shift in the way we think both about our species and our relationship to the other inhabitants of this planet. Moreover, Braidotti claims that “the posthuman condition urges us to think critically and creatively about who and what we are actually in the process of becoming”. Atwood’s fictional world pervaded with cyborgs and humanoids allows us to propose this contemporary debate as she portrays characters that blurs the traditional boundaries of the human, suggesting that one possibility to survive in the Anthropocene lies on the premise of posthumanism.