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Abstract
This article focuses on the portrayal of corporeal and textual embodiment in Marie Darrieussecq’s novel Notre vie dans les forêts (2017), a science fiction dystopia in which all bodily diseases have been cured by advancements in cloning technology. In so doing, it explores how the novel’s paradigm of bodily enhancement questions both the physical limits of the human body and the ways in which corporeal changes redefine contemporary notions of subjectivity, life and death. Drawing on posthuman theory and critical theories of the body, the analysis begins with a reading of human doubling and the portrayal of cloning, before considering the text’s depiction of bodily decay and dissection as a decentering of Darrieussecq’s human subjects. The final section concludes with an exploration of textual discontinuity and its significance for the interpretation of this work. As such, this paper demonstrates how Notre vie dans les forêts encourages its readers to contemplate the innate pathologies of the human condition, allowing them to find new life in the forces of decay and disorder that connect all living subjects.
Highlights
The body, and bodily transformations, hold an important place in the works of contemporary French author Marie Darrieussecq
Corporeal and textual embodiment are likewise central themes in Darrieussecq’s 2017 novel, Notre vie dans les forêts, a science fiction dystopia in which all bodily diseases have been cured by advances in cloning technology
Told from the perspective of the psychotherapist Viviane, whose body is gradually falling to pieces, this narrative raises the question of our contemporary desire for physical perfection and its effect on subjective experience. Engaging with this Special Collection’s objective of exploring ‘the fears, anxieties and desires that society projects onto the body’, this article explores Darrieussecq’s portrayal of a world without disease as a means to examine how her novel challenges understandings of human and posthuman subjectivity, and the ethical dilemmas posed by bioengineering in an age of material capitalism
Summary
The body, and bodily transformations, hold an important place in the works of contemporary French author Marie Darrieussecq. As the following analysis shows, Darrieussecq’s narrative interrogates the impact of technological intervention on the body but, in so doing, explores how such changes might redefine contemporary notions of subjectivity, life and death To address such questions, this article draws on scholarship on cloning and bodily enhancement from the fields of science fiction and posthuman studies (Braidotti, 2013), as well as critical theory on the body, bio-power (Foucault, 1978), and textual decentering (Braidotti, 2014), to establish a framework for the reading of Darrieussecq’s novel. This article demonstrates the ethical issues raised by human enhancement in Darrieussecq’s novel, while highlighting how the text redefines the relationship between human and posthuman subjectivity to bring our attention to the interconnection of all living forms
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