애트우드의 매드아담 3부작에 나타난 포스트휴먼 유스토피아

Abstract

Differentiated from traditional dystopias, this paper analyzes the ways Margaret Atwood imagines and formalizes humankind’s transformation into post-human ustopian forms. Discontent with the traditional notion of dystopia as a mode of anti-utopia, Atwood coins “ustopia,” a concept this paper reads as tantamount to immanent dystopia. Her ustopia is not entirely imaginary nor displaced into a distant future, but is revealed within real and relatable places where multinational corporations have taken control of every social and subjective dimension. The first installment of Atwood’s trilogy, Oryx and Crake (2003), narrates the pre- and post-apocalyptic world from the perspective of Jimmy. The second, The Year of the Flood (2009), returns to the plot in the first, but from the perspective of the two female protagonists. The narrators and the characters in this set of assembled texts do not function simply as narrators or characters, but instead can be read as a collective, assembled together through Atwood’s extensive use of free indirect discourse. The third novel, MaddAddam (2013), reveals a post-apocalyptic community consisting of humans, posthumans, hybridized animals, and sundry other creatures: in sum, a kind of post-human ustopia where species not only co-exist but outlast and live beyond the anthropocene.