Towards a Poetics of Posthumanism
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Towards a Poetics of Posthumanism Disability, Animality, and the Biopolitics of Narrative in Contemporary Anglophone Literature Tom Z. Bradstreet Ph.D. Dissertation Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo 2020 © Tom Zachary Bradstreet Tom Zachary Bradstreet 2020 Towards a Poetics of Posthumanism: Disability, Animality, and the Biopolitics of Narrative in Contemporary Anglophone Literature 2 CONTENTS * Acknowledgements 5 Introduction Rendering and Mattering: Aesthetic Disabilities, Humanist Forms, and Biopolitical Logic 7 Parallel Lives: ‘Subhumans’ Across Species 15 Disability and Animality in a Posthumanist Frame 22 The Ghost in the Machine: Two Examples 27 Aesthetic Disabilities and Humanist Forms 33 The Biopolitical Logic of Narrative Form 39 The Order of Things 45 Chapter 1 ‘Adequate Facsimiles of Humanity’: Temple Grandin and the Humanist Forms of Autobiography 49 The Price of Emergence 56 ‘This Perhaps the Least Imaginable of All’ 62 Narrative as Rehabilitation? 71 Chapter 2 And Say the Parrot Responded? Voices of Reason in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible 75 Parrots and Parroting 82 Maiming the Killjoy 89 Colonialist Ablenationalism 103 Chapter 3 ‘Not an Amenable Subject’: Beyond the Sympathetic Imagination in J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man 111 The Limits of the Sympathetic Imagination 117 Costello and Coetzee’s ‘Wounded Animals’ 117 What Is It Like to Be a Bloom? 120 ‘Keeping Open the Question of Other Lives’ 122 Monuments to the Impossible 124 Animating Rayment 128 A Tortured Lesson: Costello’s Failed Restoration 136 Chapter 4 Conspiracies: ‘Becoming Without’ and ‘Breathing With’ in Paul Auster’s Timbuktu 141 3 Extended Subjectivity, Companion Species, and ‘Becoming With’ 145 ‘Writing the Self into Being’ 150 The Biopolitics of ‘Becoming Without’ 154 Narrative Voice and Esposito’s Third Person 162 Chapter 5 ‘High Drama to a Paralytic’: The Rhizomatic Arborescence of Richard Powers’s The Overstory 169 Powers and the Antinormative Novel of Embodiment 176 ‘Everything a human being might call the story’ 180 Deleuze and Guattari Don’t Understand Trees 185 Focal Shifts, Cosmic Voices, and Rhizomatic Structures 189 An Affirmative Biopolitics of Narrative? 196 Coda Enabling Conditions: Disability, Animality, and Defamiliarisation 203 Notes 207 Works Cited 215 * 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS * If I am literally made of my innumerable ‘others’, then this dissertation has more authors than could be counted, let alone thanked. Still, that needn’t render pointless the attempt to acknowledge at least a fraction of that multitude. Here are some of the players without whom this dissertation would not be what it is—without whom, in fact, it would not be at all. First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor, Michael Lundblad, whose expert guidance and unfailing support were offered with a blend of patience, understanding, enthusiasm, and generosity that distinguishes not only the best of mentors, but the best of humans. A thousand thanks go to my co-supervisor Cary Wolfe, whose intellectual rigour and originality of thought laid down vital challenges for me to negotiate; Jan Grue, who was unfailing in his willingness to help me despite not being formally associated with my dissertation; and Susan Schweik, whose impact on this project in her capacity as my mid-way evaluator and the sponsor of my research stay at U. C. Berkeley was immeasurable. The opportunity to sit down and discuss ideas with scholars such as Mel Y. Chen, Neel Ahuja, and Margrit Shildrick was a privilege I couldn’t have dared to expect. Mexitli Nayeli López Ríos, my colleague, cage-mate, and friend, contaminated me in ways that a mere ‘thank you’ cannot hope to encompass, while Sara Orning’s arrival on Team BIODIAL managed what had seemed an impossible feat: to make an impeccable research group even better. Gratitude is also due to my many fellow Fellows—you know who you are—as well as colleagues including Tina Skouen, Karina Kleiva, Heidi Ekstrand, Sarah Salameh, Cristina Gomez Baggethun, Alba Morollón Díaz-Faes, and the one and only Matthew Williamson. This journey would not have started were it not for a number of other scholars who I have had the joy of knowing, and from whom I have had the pleasure of learning: Jonathan Roberts, Matthew Bradley, Stefan Helgesson, Claudia Egerer, and Frida Beckman leap to mind. I owe a world of thanks to my mother, Jan, who filled my universe with a lifetime’s worth of love and literature from day one; and my father, Graham, a man of stories whose faith in my ability to chart my own course has enabled me to do exactly that. Dan, Josh, Sam, Sophia, and Theo: I am not worthy. Ali, Jo, and Lyam: I love you all. Nora and Lindsay, Bill and Dawn: you’re never 5 forgotten. Ross, Suzanne, and Alex: you are wellsprings of rare inspiration, and I am so lucky to have become your kin. Jason, Hunt, Wilks, Wakefield, Howard, and the late, great Chris Brown: cheers, boys. Adam, Judith, Lee, and the dear, departed Rich Langell: gracias por todo. Sean, Synne, Bertie, Chloe, Lina, and Jed: you’re boss. Maija, Björn, Max, Youssef, Tina, Anna, Nico, Elof, Olov, Nina, Björn, Åsa, Nicholas, Maria, and Monica: tack som fan. Stine, Izelin, Bendik, Alan, Karen, Sharon, Luke, Sarah, Brian, Andrew, Laura, Dave, Simon, Rachel, Hansy, Simone, Stu, Jan Erik, Rikke, Mia, Luis, and Pål: tusen hjertelig takk. Rosie: you have become strong and wise beyond your years. I think about you every day. Oli: you bring light. Never stop doing that. Jenny: you helped to make me who I was, saw me on my way, and let me go. I carry you with me, always. And Emma: you are so integral that I almost forgot to mention you. You are the angel on my left shoulder, and the devil on my right. I love both of them equally. A few words of special gratitude are reserved for two people who have played exceptional roles in my life over the last three years. John: you have given me more than I thought possible. Eighteenth- century stationery, neon amino acids, and the worst hangover this side of the Charles Bridge—but also a hometown, a kaleidoscope of amazing memories, and a friendship verging on brotherhood. Thank you. And Juliana: since the moment we met, you’ve shown me what it means to live the beautiful philosophy that fills these pages—to live well, together, in every moment of our endlessly fleeting lives. You are my companion species; I become with you every day. Thank you. Finally: Uncle John. Words fail. This is for you. * 6 INTRODUCTION Rendering and Mattering Aesthetic Disabilities, Humanist Forms, and Biopolitical Logic * The way I naturally think and respond to things looks and feels so different from standard concepts … that some people do not consider it thought at all, but it is a way of thinking in its own right. However, the thinking of people like me is only taken seriously if we learn your language, no matter how we previously thought or interacted. Amanda Baggs, ‘In My Language’ * It begins with footage of what appears to be somebody’s home. The camera is mounted high in the room, near the ceiling, which occupies the top third of the image. Directly below is a large window, beyond which a bare tree is bathed in bright sunlight. Looking out through the glass is a silhouette: a person standing with their back to the camera. They are moving their arms—first both, then one, then the other—in a twirling motion, as if conducting a large orchestra, or wiping an array of invisible surfaces. The only audible sound is a long, thin, musical hum that slowly alternates through a small range of notes: a wordless chant. We see an object—a loop of wire, perhaps?—being scraped repeatedly against a hard surface. We see a hand rubbing the cover of a laptop, or maybe a laptop case. We see a piece of string dangling from above the top of the image, and a hand toying with it, just as a cat might toy with a loose thread of yarn. The hum-chant sounds constantly under a parade of images, until we see the same person rocking back and forth while rubbing their face between the pages of a magazine. Finally, we return to a close-up of the person’s hand conducting the world beyond the window. After three minutes and 12 seconds, the image fades to black. Suddenly, the words ‘A Translation’ fly into the centre of the picture. The title soon gives way to footage of a hand moving back and forth under a stream of water pouring into a sink. As it does so, a computerised voice begins to speak: The previous part of this video was in my native language. Many people have assumed that when I talk about this being my language that means that each part of the video must have a particular symbolic message within it designed for the human mind to interpret. But my language is not about 7 designing words or even visual symbols for people to interpret. It is about being in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment. Reacting physically to all parts of my surroundings. In this part of the video the water doesn’t symbolize anything. I am just interacting with the water as the water interacts with me. Far from being purposeless, the way that I move is an ongoing response to what is around me. Ironically, the way that I move when responding to everything around me is described as ‘being in a world of my own’ whereas if I interact with a much more limited set of responses and only react to a much more limited part of my surroundings people claim that I am ‘opening up to true interaction with the world’.