Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper examines Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape and The Island of Lost Girls using the agential realist and philosophical posthumanist methodologies of Karen Barad and Francesca Ferrando. While Escape has received some critical attention within academic circles, scholarly examination of this duology as a whole is surprisingly missing. I examine the conflict between transhumanist Generals and posthumanist Meiji, and consider its implications for the ongoing debates around gender. Does the duology posit posthumanism as an adequate solution to the gendered Othering and biological essentialism seen in the texts? Can posthumanism create an alternative space for people like Meiji, who contravene not only the human binary constructions of gender, but the constructions of human itself? As a posthuman figure, what possibilities does Meiji have for exercising agency? Though the texts see gender non-conforming identities as merely a money-making tool, torture device, or trauma response, I conclude that the figure of Meiji-Smaug expresses an intra-active, agential, posthuman self that neither prioritizes nor erases sex/gender, rather they no longer remain organizing principles of identity and society. This makes for a fruitful and situated collaboration between posthumanism and feminism.
Published Version
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