A Posthumanist Admonition: Language Philosophy in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake

Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2018, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (3): 88-98.

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A Posthumanist Admonition: Language Philosophy in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake

Ding Linpeng

Online:2018-06-25 Published:2022-05-23
About author:Ding Linpeng, Ph.D. in literature, is Associate Professor at the English Department, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University (Beijing 100871, China). His major research fields include Enligh literature and cultural studies. Email: dinglinpeng@pku.edu.cn
Supported by:
“The Construction of Canadianness in Canadian Literature” (11BWW031), sponsored by the National Social Science Fund of China

Abstract

Abstract: The paper elucidates the posthuman thought in Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, and presents reflections on the essence of language and its interconnection to humanity. Focusing on the human/inhuman boundary, the novel provides insights into the nature of humanity and civilization. There emerge three major philosophical concerns in this speculative fiction. Calling attention to the dual properties of langue and parole as well as the status of “infancy” located between the human and the inhuman, the novel depicts Crakers' language games and alludes to the ceaseless chain of signifiers along with its perpetual différance and its manipulation of absence. In addition, it also investigates the interrelation between discursive network and its quintessential construction of humanity. Oryx and Crake thus serves as a site for hermeneutical reflection on the role of language in the formation of the human subject and humanity on the whole. A reading of the philosophy of language embodied in the novel, in connection with contemporary theories in anthropology, philosophy and linguistics, offers a few theoretical glimpses of the posthuman condition.

Key words: Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, language philosophy, humanity, posthumanism

Ding Linpeng. A Posthumanist Admonition: Language Philosophy in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2018, 40(3): 88-98.

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A Posthumanist Admonition: Language Philosophy in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake

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