Imagining The Posthuman:A Comparative Study Of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy And Wang Jinkang’s New Human Tetralogy

This is a comparative study of the posthuman represented in Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy(2003-2013)and Chinese writer Wang Jinkang’s New Human Tetralogy(2003-2012).Within the broad theoretical framework of critical posthumanism,this study first concludes the ways in which both writers take to demonstrate their conceptions of the posthuman.Both Margaret Atwood and Wang Jinkang deal with three types of the posthuman:the technologically enhanced transhuman,the human-animal hybridity and the digitalized human.Based on the commonalities,this study probes into the differences in the two writers’ representation of the posthuman at these three layers.Firstly,in Atwood’s trilogy,the enhanced transhuman indicates a transcendent,subversive possibility,but in Wang’s tetralogy,the transgressive nature of enhancement technology has caused various dilemmas for humankind.Secondly,Atwood’s trilogy celebrates human-animal hybridity as a new,innovative form of symbiosis between human and non-human beings,but in Wang’s tetralogy,the blurring of species boundaries is considered a crisis of Anthropocentrism.Thirdly,in Atwood’s trilogy,video game-playing enables an embodied experience and acknowledges the complex interplay of the mind and the body,but in Wang’s tetralogy,artificial intelligence presents a highly dilemmatic scenario in which the character vacillates between his body and mind,indicating a body-mind dualism.Through the analysis of these three aspects,this thesis concludes that,generally speaking,Atwood engages in a thorough deconstruction of anthropocentrism and its associated binaries,exhibiting a postmodernist tone.Her work alerts readers to the possible catastrophes of the posthuman era but also highlights a positive vision of the future.Wang’s tetralogy places greater emphasis on the ethical,political,and social issues caused by the posthuman.His works follow the tradition of sci-fi realism and issue warnings by providing insight into the societal changes wrought by technology.The exploration of differences between the two works is contextualized in the literary traditions of Chinese and Canadian science fiction.Therefore,not only is this study a systematic,comparative analysis of two influential posthuman science fiction of the 21st century,but it also forms a part of a wider narrative about the possible connections and distinctions between Chinese and Canadian science fiction.