När sten-trädet sjunger : En undersökning av livfull materia och gränsöverskridande kroppar i Wild Seed och Altered Carbon

Sammanfattning: In this paper, I study vibrant matter and bodily transgressions in Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed and Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. Through a comparative analysis focusing on the cyborg protagonists of the two novels, I examine the portrayal of animals, humans and objects, and try to determine whether the cyborg characters, in their bodily transgressions of hierarchical dualisms such as mind/body, subject/object, human/animal, can be said to represent a questioning of an anthropocentric and humanist world-view. I also examine whether there’s a difference to be found in the ways in which the two novels go about this. Throughout my study, I focus on material agency in relation to my cyborg characters, and seek answers to the following questions: Which hierarchal dualisms are established and/or transgressed in the space between embodiment and self-identity in Kovacs and Anyanwu? How are these characters portrayed, in relationship to their environment? Is there something in the novels similar to the horizontal plane presented by Bennet? I conclude that Anyanwu and Kovacs represent a critique of anthropocentrism and of the Cartesian subject, as well as a tendency toward a posthuman embodiment, and a movement toward Bennett’s horizontal plane. In my analysis of these characters, matter is shown to possess knowledge, memory and emotion, to have agency and the ability to affect change, both inside and outside the human body. The bodies of my characters are shown to carry equal, if not greater importance, in the construction of self-identity, than does their non-corporeal minds. In Wild Seed, an anthropocentric world view is revealed to be portrayed, only to be questioned by Anyanwu’s bodily transgressions of the human/animal dualism, while in Altered Carbon, something that at first seems more similar to Bennett’s horizontal plane is portrayed, only to be undermined by anthropocentrism. In the end, Bennett’s horizontal plane remains out of reach, however, Kovacs and Anyanwu possess a cyborg’s knack of establishing channels of communication across boundaries, and so are concluded to have given voice to the possibility of a vital materiality.