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(UN)NATURAL BODIES, ENDANGERED SPECIES, AND EMBODIED OTHERS IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S ORYX AND CRAKE
Title
(UN)NATURAL BODIES, ENDANGERED SPECIES, AND EMBODIED OTHERS IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S ORYX AND CRAKE.
Creator
Galbreath, Marcy, Murphy, Patrick, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The developing knowledge of life sciences is at the crux of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as she examines human promise gone awry in a near-future dystopia. This thesis examines aspects of posthumanism, ecocriticism, and feminism in the novel's scientific, cultural, and environmental projections. Through the trope of extinction, Atwood's text foregrounds the effects of human exceptionalism and instrumentalism in relation to the natural world, and engenders an analysis of human...
Show moreThe developing knowledge of life sciences is at the crux of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as she examines human promise gone awry in a near-future dystopia. This thesis examines aspects of posthumanism, ecocriticism, and feminism in the novel's scientific, cultural, and environmental projections. Through the trope of extinction, Atwood's text foregrounds the effects of human exceptionalism and instrumentalism in relation to the natural world, and engenders an analysis of human identity through its biological and cultural aspects. Extinction thus serves as a metaphor for both human development and human excesses, redefining the idea of human within the context of vulnerable species. Oryx and Crake reveals humanity's organic connections with non-human others through interspecies gene-splicing and the ensuing hybridity. In this perspective, Atwood's text provides a dialogue on humankind's alienation from the natural world and synchronic connections to the animal other, and poses timely questions for twenty-first century consumerism, globalism, and humanist approaches to nature. The loss of balance provoked by the apocalyptic situation in Oryx and Crake challenges commonplace attitudes toward beneficial progress. This imbalance signals the need for a new narrative: A consilient reimagining of humanity's role on earth as an integrated organism rather than an intellectual singularity.
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Date Issued
2010
Identifier
CFE0003227, ucf:48552
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003227
The Machine, the Victim, and the Third Thing: Navigating the Gender Spectrum in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood
Title
The Machine, the Victim, and the Third Thing: Navigating the Gender Spectrum in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.
Creator
Anderson, Lindsay, Oliver, Kathleen, Logan, Lisa, Murphy, Patrick, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: (")People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing.(") I assert that Atwood depicts this (")third thing(") through her characters who navigate between the binaries of (")masculine(") and (")feminine(") in a third realm of gender. As the...
Show moreThis thesis explores Atwood's depiction of gender in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In an interview from 1972, Margaret Atwood spoke on survival: (")People see two alternatives. You can be part of the machine or you can be something that gets run over by it. And I think there has to be a third thing.(") I assert that Atwood depicts this (")third thing(") through her characters who navigate between the binaries of (")masculine(") and (")feminine(") in a third realm of gender. As the female characters(-)regardless of their passive or aggressive behavior(-)engage in a quest for agency, they must overcome bodily limitations. Oryx(-)the quintessential problematic, oppressed feminine figure(-)and Ren are both associated with sex as they are passed from man to man throughout their lives. Furthermore, as other females (namely, Amanda and Toby) adopt masculine traits associated with power in an attempt at self-preservation both before and after the waterless flood, men in the novels strive to subvert this power through rape to remind these women of their confinement within their physical bodies and to reinstitute the binary gender system. The men also span the gender continuum, with Crake representing the masculine (")machine(") and Jimmy gravitating toward the feminine victim. Crake, who seems to live life uninhibited from his body, appears to escape the bodily confinements that the women experience, while Jimmy's relationship to his body is more complex. As Jimmy competes to (")out-masculinize(") Crake, and Amanda and Toby struggle to avoid both identification with and demolition by the machine, readers of the novels are invited to think beyond the (")machinery(") of gender norms to consider gender as a continuum instead of a dualistic factor.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004351, ucf:49459
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004351
Genetic Engineering as Literary Praxis: A Study in Contemporary Literature
Title
Genetic Engineering as Literary Praxis: A Study in Contemporary Literature.
Creator
Evans, Taylor, Campbell, James, Oliver, Kathleen, Murphy, Patrick, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood (-) originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis (-) Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel...
Show moreThis thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood (-) originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis (-) Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel Mendel's Dwarf, and the first two books in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction MaddAddam series: 2003's Oryx and Crake and 2009's The Year Of the Flood. I argue that the inclusion of genetic engineering has changed as the technology moves from science fiction to science fact, moving from the fantastic to the mundane. Throughout its recent literary history, genetic engineering has played a role in complicating questions of sexuality, paternity, and the division between nature and culture. It has also come to represent a nexus of potential cultural change, one which stands to fulfill the dramatic hybridity Haraway rhapsodized in her (")Cyborg Manifesto(") while also containing the potential to disrupt the ecocritical conversation by destroying what we used to understand as nature. Despite their four different takes on the issue, each of the texts I read offers a complex vision of utopian hopes and apocalyptic fears. They agree that, for better or for worse, genetic engineering is forever changing both our world and ourselves.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004373, ucf:49438
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004373