Writing Between "the Human" and "the Animal" in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy

Thesis

Reference

Writing Between "the Human" and "the Animal" in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy

SKIBO-BIRNEY, Bryn

Abstract

Through narratological analyses of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, this project challenges the ingrained epistemologies and ontologies of humanism and anthropocentrism and offers a zoecentric alternative: the “individual” is always-already hybrid. Beginning with a post-structural and post-humanist theoretical framework, Part I explores how Atwood constructs hybrid Bildungsromans in Crake and Flood by aligning narratively significant moments of inter-species interaction with substantial shifts of the binary narrative structure.

Both novels end, however, on unresolved binary options. Part II introduces Anishinaabe epistemologies and ontologies of interconnectivity, using the philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin alongside aspects of Anishinaabemowin and narrative forms, in order to conduct an Indigenous-centric reading of MaddAddam. I argue that the trilogy both depicts and performs a zoecentric epistemological/ontological shift in the development of the characters, the narrative structure, and the trilogy as a whole, forming a homology with contemporary theoretical, biological, and genetic understandings of individuals [...]

SKIBO-BIRNEY, Bryn. Writing Between "the Human" and "the Animal" in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy. Thèse de doctorat : Univ. Genève, 2020, no. L. 982

DOI : 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:136538 URN : urn:nbn:ch:unige-1365385

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:136538

Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.

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A DOCTORALDISSERTATIONPRESENTED

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THE DEPARTMENTOF ENGLISH LANGUAGEAND LITERATURE

FACULTYOF HUMANITIES, UNIVERSITYOF GENEVA

JANUARY 2020

DIRECTRICEDE THÈSE

PROFESSOR DEBORAH L. MADSEN

PRÉSIDENTEDU JURY: PROFESSOR GUILLEMETTE BOLENS

For Robin and Mom

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Acknowledgements vi

Project Abstract vii INTRODUCTION: WE ARE ALWAYS, ALREADY HYBRID 1 A: The Project in Brief 1 B: Methodology, Theory, Corpus, and Thesis 3 C: Situating the Project in Animal Studies 18

D: Scholarly Review: Blurring Ontological and Narrative Binaries and Boundaries in Atwood’s Poetry and Prose 49 E: The Critical Contextualization of the MaddAddam Trilogy 68 F: Chapter Outlines 85 PART I: BINARY DE/REFORMATIONIN ORYXAND CRAKEAND THE YEAROFTHE FLOOD ONE: DECONSTRUCTING “THE HUMAN” AND “THE ANIMAL” THROUGH DIFFÉRANCE, BECOMING, AND COMPOST 101 A: Jacques Derrida 101

B: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari 114

C: Donna Haraway 124

D: The Contact Zone: Atwood, Deleuze/Guattari, and Haraway 136

TWO: POLARITY, BINARIES, FRAGMENTATION, AND HYBRIDITYIN ORYXAND CRAKE 145

A: The Foundation and Dissolution of the Binary Narrative and Epistem-Ontologies 148

B: Narrative and Epistem-Ontological Breakdown and Hybrid Reformation 177

C: Becoming-With Pigoons, Rakunks, Parrots, and Oryxes 205

D: Hybrid Conclusions 238

THREE: HUMANIST PREACHINGAND ZOECENTRIC THEOLOGY: STRUCTUREAND “BECOMINGS” IN THE YEAROFTHE FLOOD 241

A: The Gardeners’ Zoecentric Theology 244

B: Theo-Narratological Structuring and Breakdown 259

C: Toby’s Formation into the Hybrid Preacher 266

D: (In)Concluding Flood: Binaries, Bildungs, Refractions, and a (Temporary) “Third-Thing” Sermon 292

PART II: REFRACTING ANTHROPOCENTRISMIN MADDADDAM, OR, IT’S INTERCONNECTIVITY ALLTHE WAY DOWN FOUR: INTERWOVEN NARRATIVESAND WEAVING THEORIES 299

A: From Crake and Flood to MaddAddam: Inter- and Intratextual Relations 299

B: Mino-Bimaadiziwin, Anishinaabemowin, and Aadizookaanag Guiding Literary Theory 307

C: The Intersection of Anishinaabe Mino-Bimaadiziwin and Deleuze/Guattari, Haraway, and Atwood 340

FIVE: DISCONTINUOUS NARRATIVEAS ONTOLOGICAL ESCAPE 365

A: Creating Community with Story: Estrangement, Alignment, Intertextuality, and Accretion 366

B: The Heteroglot “Individual” Narrator: Fourth-Person Tense and Double-Voiced Discourse 377

C: The Effect of the Present-Absent Implied Audience 385

D: Dialogism, Intertextuality, and Epistem-Ontological Shift 399

E: Interruptions, Plot Points, Structural Shift, and Shifting Worldviews: Embedded Stories Two Through Five 407

SIX: NARRATIVEAND COMMUNAL FLOURISHINGIN BREAKING DOWNAND BREAKING THROUGH 437

A: Blurring Binaries, Blurring Boundaries: Cities and Hives 438

B: Blurring (Anthropocentric) Binaries; Blurring (Species) Boundaries: Human and “Animal,” Real and Virtual, Signifier and Signified 451

C: Blurring Binaries, Blurring Boundaries: Levinasian Face, Life, Time, and Language 459

D: Vectors of Narrative and Subjective Interconnectivity: The Sixth and Seventh Embedded Stories 481

E: Narrative Disruption in MaddAddam: Binary to Ternary, Monologism to Polylogism 504

F: Tracing Toby’s Ontological Shift Through Figurative Language: Similes, Metaphors, and “Anthropomorphism” 506

G: Repetition with Difference: Circular and Spiral Narratives in the Eighth Embedded Story 516

SEVEN: INTERCONNECTING NARRATIVE AMBIGUITY AS NARRATIVE REFORMATIONAND RESOLUTION 525

A: Characterization as Community-Formation: Othering and Including in Figurative Language, Names, Time, and Perspective 527

B: Narrating the “Third Thing”: Toby, Blackbeard, and Narrative Inter-Play in the Ninth and Tenth Embedded Stories 544

C: Ternary Narrative Structure and Polyphonic Convergence 570

D: Hybrid, Compound, and Interconnected Narratives: The Eleventh and Twelfth Embedded Stories 580

E: Ambiguous Resolution via Zoecentric Communality 597

CONCLUSION: MARGARET ATWOOD’S ZOECENTRIC NARRATIVES 601

Appendices 607

Works Cited 613

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Fittingly, this dissertation is the result of a vast web of relations. I could not have asked for a more conducive environment for my dissertation than the English Department of the University of Geneva, which supported my teaching, research, and conference travel during the formative years of this project. My students’ insight and enthusiasm taught me to see novels and theories in unanticipated and exciting ways. My inspiring colleagues provided much-needed guidance as I worked out my thoughts on Atwood’s trilogy. I am deeply grateful for their critical insights on my research and writing, their keen readings on animal studies philosophy, their examples of scholarship conducted at the most rigorous levels, and, most important, their friendship.

English literature peers across Europe and North America similarly gave shape to the project as I presented pieces of it in Basel and Geneva, Malta and Toronto, Winnipeg and Washington, D.C.

The Swiss Association for North American Studies kindly provided me with a research grant to visit the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, home to Margaret Atwood’s archived manuscripts. Margaret Noodin has generously shared her vast knowledge of Anishinaabemowin with me, patiently clarifying the interrelated branches of Anishinaabemowin words by email. I am honored and thankful that Margaret Noodin, Gabriele Rippl, and Lorraine Weir agreed to provide their expertise to my project as members of the examining panel, alongside Guillemette Bolens in her role as présidente du jury.

My supervisor, Deborah Madsen, stands alone in my immense gratitude and appreciation for her indefatigable support of and guidance over my research and writing, through its many twists and turns, surprises and dead-ends. Her influence is evident to me in every significant shift that this dissertation has taken. It is truly a dialogic work, written with her exceptional example in mind.

Deborah has been, and continues to be, an academic inspiration and guiding light.

When a project encompasses more than six years, it becomes a virtual member of the family.

I am very grateful to my American and Scottish families for making space for it, for understanding when I brought research on vacation, and for keeping me going when it seemed particularly daunting. Of particular note, to my husband, Robin, who started me down this graduate path, shared many dinners with Toby and Zeb, and supported me from beginning to end, thank you for keeping the light on. To my mom, Leslie, who has always been there to dispel fears and to share every celebration, thank you for listening. And to Bonnie, who slept next to me while I wrote every word and reminded me when it was time to wander in the woods, thank you for your companionship.

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Through a close narratological reading of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy – comprised of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013) – this project challenges the ingrained Euro-American epistemologies and ontologies of human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism, and humanism and offers a zoecentric alternative: the “individual” is always- already hybrid, compound, or profoundly interconnected. Beginning with a post-structural and post- humanist (specifically, Harawayian “compostism”) theoretical framework, Part I of the project explores how Atwood constructs hybrid Bildungsromans in Crake and Flood by aligning narratively significant moments of inter-species interaction with substantial shifts of the binary narrative structure. Both novels end, however, on unresolved binary options. Part II of the project introduces Anishinaabe epistemologies and ontologies of interconnectivity, using the all-encompassing philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin alongside aspects of Anishinaabe language (Anishinaabemowin) and narrative forms and performance, in order to conduct an Indigenous-centric reading of Atwood’s third and final novel. Reading MaddAddam through Anishinaabe, as well as post- structural and compostist, theories allows me to argue that the MaddAddam trilogy both depicts and performs a zoecentric epistemological and ontological shift in the development of the characters, the narrative structure, and the trilogy as a whole. This shift in the content and narrative form of the novels creates a homology with contemporary theoretical, biological, and genetic understandings of bodies, individuals, and species today as being “compound individuals” and inherent multiplicities.

However, the narrative shifts are often evident only to the external reader, leading me to conclude that Atwood’s trilogy not only depicts an alternative, non-humanist, and zoecentric speculative future, but that these profound interconnections between and within the so-called “individual” are necessary realizations for readers to make if we are to avoid the very post-apocalyptic world that Atwood has so presciently constructed in the trilogy.

“Binary is a false idol.”

– Lilly Wachowski

“…we are all composite creatures, not purely and unambiguously individuals.”

– David Quammen, The Tangled Tree

“We are all double, always multiple… . The oracle tells us that she is ‘one and three,’ a multiplicity with unity. It is learning how to live, practically, with this knowledge that is difficult.”

– Sherrill Grace, Violent Dualities

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SECTION A: THE PROJECTIN BRIEF

The purpose of this project is to challenge, through a close narratological analysis of Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, representations of the ostensibly steadfast nature of species boundaries, specifically between Homo sapiens and all other beings so troublingly otherized as “animals.”

Highlighting the invariably flexible, nebulous, and constantly shifting nature of species boundaries has at least two important effects: first, it challenges and redefines the Euro-American notion of the human subject. As scholars of the interrelated fields of literary animal studies and post-structural posthumanism have identified, the subject who emerged from the epistemologies of the Enlightenment, Modernism, and Humanism is based upon the distinction, separation, and repression of “the animal”; to be human, in the modernist and humanist sense, is to be “not-animal.” However, once species distinctions are found to be largely cultural constructs, as opposed to indisputable biological certainties, the subject can and must be redefined in terms of what it has for too long rejected (often violently) and considered “Other”: to be human is to be one “animal” among and comprised of many. Second, highlighting the imprecise nature of “species” invalidates the Euro- American assumption of speciesism, or what Cary Wolfe, via Jacques Derrida, calls the “institution of speciesism”: “the ethical acceptability of the systematic ‘noncriminal putting to death’ of animals based solely on their species” (Derrida, qtd. in Wolfe 2003, 7). Confronting and rewriting this assumption negates the foundational tool of discrimination among humans; if “the human” can no longer be defined as the “not-animal,” then marginalized, disenfranchised, and subjugated human beings can no longer be distanced from self-sovereignty and social enfranchisement through the

“discourse of species,” the rhetorical and material practices which assumes and reasserts the institution of speciesism (ibid). Challenging species boundaries reinstates the repressed and

rhetorically othered “animal” (be it a human or nonhuman being) back to the center of the Euro- American subject, who is subsequently reconfigured as always, already hybrid.

To be clear, the project does not argue that all life forms are the same, or that differences between beings do not exist. Instead, using a inter-disciplinary theoretical framework of post- structuralism, posthumanism (or, more accurately, Harawayian companion species theory and

“compostism”), and the Anishinaabe philosophy and moral directive of mino-bimaadiziwin, the project considers how it is difficult, if not impossible, to set out distinct species boundaries, as species are formed by shifting degrees of difference, much like language itself. Throughout the project, a narratological methodology provides a stable and “systematic” approach to reading narratives; this approach is then troubled, “queered” or “made strange,” by “red reading,” Scott Andrews’s term for a “native-centric” approach which “produces an interpretation of a non-native text from a native perspective (Bal 10; Andrews ii, i). In his Introduction to Transmotion’s special issue on “Red Reading,” Andrews writes that the act of “red reading” non-Native texts “do[es] not try to destabilize representations of American Indians; instead, [it] seeks to destabilize, among other things, the dominant culture’s confidence in representations of itself” (iii). Using Anishinaabe perspectives in a narratological analysis of Atwood’s non-Indigenous texts “destabilizes” the Euro- American assumption of speciesism and offers an alternative to hegemonic ontologies which perpetuate an abusive hierarchy of humans over nonhumans, and which support problematic binaries such as: human/“animal,” mind/body, self/other, subject/object, nature/culture(technology), and natural/unnatural. Brought together, these disparate approaches – the post-structural, compostist, and “red reading” theoretical framework with a narratological methodology – help to elucidate how Atwood creates a model of non-binary, zoecentric interspecies intersubjectivity in both the content and the form of the MaddAddam trilogy. Part I of this project focuses on the parallel and related narratives of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, finding that both novels depict a hybrid Bildungsroman of the respective protagonists, in complementary,

contrapuntal ways. While the novels do not provide a conclusive resolution to their narratives, the lack of resolution provides the space necessary for a non-binary alternative to be developed by the third novel, MaddAddam, which is the sole focus of Part II. In this latter half of the project, Anishinaabe philosophies, narrative forms, and linguistic models provide an ahumanist model for analyzing how stories, figures, and language work outside of humanist epistem-ontologies. Thus, not only are humans and nonhumans read as complexly intertwined, so too are the stories they tell, both within and between Atwood’s novels. From these combined and intertwined readings, this project argues that the compostist/ahumanist subject is one of multiplicity, of paradoxical

“individuality” being constantly co-created through the complex interrelatings, “becomings,” and symbiotic co-development and interconnectivity of many beings and processes. In other words, the seeming individual human is always-already hybrid with the “other-than-human” and “more-than- human” world around it (Hallowell 22).

SECTION B: METHODOLOGY, THEORY, CORPUS, AND THESIS

Highlighting the “doubtful” nature of species, as identified by Darwin himself in The Origin of Species (1859), may seem, on the one hand, absurd: the entrenched Euro-American epistemologies and ontologies (and, therefore, languages and cultures) of humanism, human exceptionalism, and anthropocentrism provide the foundation for and the reaffirmation of the belief that Homo sapiens is self-evidently determinable from and superior to other, “lower” nonhuman species (Darwin 574).

This dichotomy is based in part on presuppositions and long-held beliefs regarding fundamental differences between “Man” and “Animal,” such as the possession of rational thought, consciousness, language (especially written), self-reflection, emotional intelligence, tool use, and culture, and the ability to teach (or disseminate cultural practices and information across generations), learn, and perceive the mind of another (also known as the “theory of mind”). With

these abilities and differences firmly established, the humanist subject can be identified and defined through exclusion, part of a process that Giorgio Agamben labels “the anthropological machine.” ¹ Those who possess these capabilities in full are considered a subject: rational, autopoietic, and autonomous “Man,” who has inherent worth and is deserving of dignity and moral regard. In contrast, that which does not possess these traits is “less” than human, understood to be subhuman or “animal,” and thereby objectified, commodified, and consumed (either symbolically or literally or both). Furthermore, since moral regard excludes “animals,” who/which merely exist in the world (but are not, according to Heidegger, “world-forming”), “Man” is not constrained in his imposition of will on the world (Heidegger 1962; see also Calarco 2004, 21). This idea dates at least as far back as Aristotle, who theorized that “plants are created for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of men; the tame for our use and provision; the wild, at least the greater part, for our provision also, or for some other advantageous purpose such as furnishing us with clothes, and the like”; it is also evident in the biblical Creation story, which explains that “animals,” named by the paradigmatic man, are to be “dominated” and “subdued” for human purposes (Aristotle 13; Oxford Annotated Bible Gen. 1.26, 1.28). Despite humanism’s proclaimed secularity, the human/animal divide propagates the Aristotelian and Christian directive to “dominate” via the anthropocentric interests of capitalist, scientific, and technological advances; as Adam Weitzenfeld and Melanie Joy put it, “[f]or humans to assert their species-being upon the world, to optimize nature’s utility for human interests, is not merely an option, but historical destiny to be fulfilled” (emphasis added, 6;

see also Linzey and Clark 1990). To deny or even limit “Man’s” utilization of the nonhuman world by claiming an inherent relation with it, as fellow “animals,” is to deny humanity’s exceptional right to progress and prosperity.

In The Open (2002), Agamben theorizes that the “human” is produced through a simultaneous process of exclusion

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and inclusion: “Indeed, precisely because the human is already presupposed [by the binary opposition of human/animal]

every time, the machine actually produces a kind of state of exception, a zone of indeterminacy in which the outside is nothing but the exclusion of an inside and the inside is in turn only the inclusion of an outside” (37).

On the other hand, the deconstructive aim of this project may seem self-evident: scientists, from biology and botany to genetics and paleontology, understand that “species” as a term is

“arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience” and does not categorically and definitively differentiate species from varieties, or varieties from other, entirely “different,” species (Darwin 578). According to Tom Tyler, in his evolutionary reading (what Hoogheem terms “evocriticism”) ² of Kafka’s short story, “A Report to an Academy,” “[t]he true importance of Darwin’s work was not that he demonstrated the origin of any species, but that he showed just how specious the notion of species can be (178; Hoogheem 55). Using Darwin, Linnaeus, Dawkins, and others, Tyler explores the historical context of species classification, finding that if humans used the same classification rules (based on genetic similarities) as we do for other species, humans should be grouped with chimpanzees and some of the other “great apes,” either by reclassifying Homo sapiens to the genus Pan or including some apes in the genus Homo (180). However, doing so is not necessarily a panacea to human exceptionalism as humans are, Tyler (via Derrida) writes, a “species of narcissism”; incorporating other apes into the genus Homo would simply bring a few select beings into humanity’s sphere of privilege (183). Instead, Tyler suggests that identifying classifications be based less on “genealogical and evolutionary categories” and more on “the parts of speech employed in claims to self-identify. Where the substantive tends to define and delimit, the adjective permits a more inclusive multiplicity of relations. One might chose, then, to acknowledge one’s animal being rather than to be an animal…” (emphasis in original; 184). Multiplicity, processes of becoming through relations, and shifting boundaries are, Tyler indicates, always-already at the heart of Darwinian species categorizations.

So-called “ring species” are an example of this varietal indeterminacy. Richard Dawkins describes them as species “in

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which neighboring groups can and do interbreed, all the way around the world, but whose ‘ends’ constitute two distinct species” (Dawkins, qtd. in Tyler 177-78). Dawkins uses this theory to propose “a thought experiment” demonstrating that humans can be conceived as a temporal ring species, the significance being that “‘[w]e admit that we are likes apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes’” (emphasis in original; Dawkins, qtd. in Tyler 178).

However, the concept of “species” is troubled not only by these indeterminable and shifting borders, but by the very nature of evolution itself. Since the early twentieth century, Darwin’s vertical tree of genetic descent has been gradually replaced with a rhizomic web of intersubjective, interspecies, symbiotic relatings, partnerings, and infections. In these profoundly layered micro- and macroscopic interconnections, evolution happens as much vertically (through generational and parental heredity) as it does horizontally (through horizontal gene transfer [HGT] across the permeable “boundaries” of species, genus, phylums, even kingdoms and domains). The consequence of these scientific discoveries and developments since Darwin’s publication is a movement away from an accepted convention of the human as “an isolated creature, [or] a discrete subject,” and towards a vision of inherent interconnectivity (Quammen 330). In the 1970s, a period of time that saw great social changes in human and nonhuman rights, as explained below, evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis proved that Homo sapiens, indeed nearly all of life, evolved and exists due to endosymbiogenesis, the nesting of a bacterial organism inside an archaeon, which then reproduce(s) as “symbiotic complexes” or a “compound individual”; more simply, evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääabo describes the human genome as “a mosaic” (Quammen 115, 348, 382; see also Yong 9). An individual human being is now far less “individual” and “human” ³ than ever previously understood in Euro-American scientific and cultural theories. Rather, the human “I” is always, already composite, interconnected, or hybrid. We are always in the process of ⁴

Yong explains, in I Contain Multitudes, that before this symbiotic encounter, life on Earth consisted solely of bacteria

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and archaea, which are “superficially similar” to each other: both are single-celled organisms which lack a nucleus and an internal skeleton (9). In contrast, eukaryotes, the “symbiotic complexes” which were created when a bacterium was trapped inside an archaeon and this pairing was reproduced in offspring, are multicellular, have an internal skeleton, a central nucleus, and mitochondria (8-9). All “animal” life is eukaryotic, as are plants, fungus, and algae (8).

“Hybrid,” stemming from the Latin hybrida, initially referred specifically to the “offspring of a tame sow and wild

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boar…”; this first reference to nonhuman beings is eventually, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, linked to human parentages (“hence, of human parents of different races, half-breed” (OED Online, 1a, 1b). Likewise, even in its more modern, biological definitions, the potentially negative aspect of “hybrid” can be seen in the provided synonyms and additional definitions: “offspring of two animals or plants of different species, or (less strictly) varieties; a half- breed, cross-breed, or mongrel” or “[a]nything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of different or incongruous elements” (emphasis added; OED Online 1a, 2a). References to “mongrels,” and even “incongruous elements,” imply a discordant, sub-optimal aspect to hybridity, due precisely to its mixed nature. Indeed, throughout many of the historical examples provided, the OED implies the often racist and/or sexist, dehumanizing practices linked to species boundaries, and their blurring through “cross-breeding.”

becoming-human through relatings with the beings, spaces, and technologies around, and, importantly, within “us.”

Considering the “vague and arbitrary” nature of defining “species” as identified by Darwin himself, which is further complicated by theories of horizontal gene transfer, it is important to explain what I mean by “hybridity” (Darwin 575). Aside from Darwin’s understanding of the hybrid, as “the offspring of the union of two distinct species,” hybrid should be differentiated from the often-synonymous “chimera,” in order to emphasize the “irreducible plurality” of the always- already entangled being (Darwin 922). While hybrids and chimeras are both mixtures of what are considered to be many species within one apparently individual subject, the chimera can be visually reduced to its component parts (for example, in Greek mythology, the chimera is often composed of the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a snake). Likewise, scientific definitions of chimerism reflect the mythological and visual representations of the being. In “The Science of Chimeras and Hybrids,” Tara Seyfer defines the differences between the chimera and the hybrid at the cellular level, explaining that the chimera “consists of the combination between two different species within an organism. However, the genes of the two species do not combine as with a hybrid” (emphasis added; 2004). Rather, she explains, in order to create a chimera, an organism’s cells are often manipulated in vitro. During this process, a cell from a different species is

“introduced” but it does not “fus[e] its genetic material with the other cells” (ibid). The resulting organism has cellular material of the two (or more) different species, but “a variegated pattern throughout the body” (ibid). These variations of pattern make apparent the different cellular material composing the subject, and thus implicitly reinforce the notion of a conventional, non- variegated individual. In contrast, Seyfer’s definition of the cellular makeup of the hybrid recalls the neo-Darwinian, post-structural, and compostist arguments made earlier with regard to the inability to separate the individual self into its component “parts” of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind.

As Seyfer explains, the hybrid is “the product of breeding two different species… . Each cell in the

hybrid’s body has a mixture of genes from both parents” (emphasis added; ibid). From this definition, the hybrid is a fundamentally and inherently mixed and irreducible figure of a seemingly singular multiplicity.

With this in mind, the term “hybrid,” used throughout this project, should be taken to mean a resulting, indistinct blurring between two previously distinct forms. “Previously” means to indicate a temporal, contingent nature in my use of hybridity: if one is “always-already hybrid,” that implies that what came before was not, or was believed not to be; that is, the predecessors were believed to be distinct and separate even if closer inspection of these earlier forms indicates that they, too, were always-already hybrid. As I write in Part II, borrowing from Donna Haraway, it is hybridity or interconnectivity “all the way down.” In contrast, the “hybrid” of this project is understood to be inherently, irreducibly interconnected, or “hybrid at the origin” (borrowing from Derrida’s

“difference at the origin,” discussed in chapter one): at the micro level, hybridity refers to the biosphere that is the human and nonhuman body, and at the macro level, hybridity refers to the relationships and ontology which depict the human and nonhuman as rhizomes of constant interaction, being mutually formative and co-determinative in the creation of the self or the

“individual.” Hybridity in this project, then, can refer to genetically hybrid, as manifested in the MaddAddam trilogy by the Crakers, Pigoons, rakunks, wolvogs, and glow-in-the-dark rabbits – or narratologically hybrid – as depicted in the inter-textual and intra-textual blurring and borrowing that takes place within and between the novels, as they repeat and refract the narrative structures, themes, and characters of earlier texts. In contrast, “interconnectivity” – such as an interconnected ⁵

“individual” – is often used to address the intersubjective links and relationships which are formed between two (or more) ostensibly individual beings, often through narrative depictions and dramatizations of re/deterritorialization or the becoming-with of companion species. In these cases,

Melissa De Bruyker also identifies “verbal hybridity,” which is caused by ambiguous words or overlapping ideological

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discourses that sabotage a straightforward production of images,” as found in the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Homi Bhabha (205ft.1). The interconnection between representations of genetic hybridity, narrative hybridity, and Bakhtinian

“verbal hybridity” is explored in more detail in Part II.

the physical appearance of the being(s) in question suggests an adherence to conventional species boundaries; however, narrative elements (such as focalization, figurative language, types of discourse, or changes in mind style) indicate that the subject can no longer be conceived as an individual, but as co-constituted by their interactions with others. For this reason, and as discussed below, detailed narrative analysis plays a central role in this project.

The emphasis on hybridity – in its genetic, narratological, or verbal manifestations – throughout the following analyses of Atwood’s trilogy highlights the flexible and shifting nature of species boundaries and thereby destabilizes and decenters speciesist epistemologies and ontologies of humanism, anthropocentrism, and human exceptionalism. This shift allows for the emergence and development of posthumanist and non-anthropocentric, or even zoe-centric, epistemologies and ontologies that prioritize the flourishing of life across all species and lifeforms, as opposed to the flourishing of human life alone. This development is important for more than simply reasserting ⁶ the value, dignity, and inherent worth in nonhuman beings (though this is an extremely important and valuable project in its own right); to borrow from Cary Wolfe, taking post-anthropocentrism seriously, “confronting the institution of speciesism and crafting a posthumanist [or zoecentric]

theory of the subject has nothing to do with whether you like animals” (emphasis in original; 2003, 7; see also 2009, 567). The post-Enlightenment and humanist subject is based upon Cartesian dualism, resulting not only in the separation of mind/body, but subsequently, human/animal: “the human” is a responding (not reacting), rational (not instinctual), subject (not object) of civilization

In The Posthuman, Rosi Braidotti argues that “[z]oe-centered egalitarianism is, for me the core of the post-

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anthropocentric turn” because “‘[l]ife, far from being codified as the exclusive property or the unalienable right of one species, the human, over all others or of being sacralized as a pre-established given, is posited as a process, interactive and open-ended” (60). Bios (βίος) and zoe (ζωή) both mean “life” in Greek; unsurprisingly, then, scholars in posthumanism, animal studies, and Atwood studies often use “biocentric” to indicate a post-anthropocentric or ecocentric view similar to Braidotti’s zoe-centricism (see, for example, Herman and Rozelle). I use “zoecentrism” and

“zoecentric” in order to emphasize clearly an epistemology and ontology that prioritize and center the interconnection of all life as well as the inherent “animal” nature of humanity. At times when I use the term “non-anthropocentrism,” it is to indicate the formerly anthropocentric worldview that has shifted (since “non-anthropocentric,” much like post- human, still implicitly indicates the anthropos that was previously at the center). That is to say, there is often, in the analyses of the trilogy, a spectrum of -centricity: “anthropocentric” represents one end of it while “ecocentric”

represents another. Zoecentric is closer to the ecocentric end while non-anthropocentric is closer to the anthropocentric end (though certainly closer to zoecentric than anthropocentric!).

(not nature). This means that the humanist subject is based on negation and exclusion and requires the position of the animal-other in order to self-identify. Therefore, the “animal” is always-already at the paradoxical “center” of the subject and cannot be truly separated; the human subject can never transcend its embodied animality. The tension produced in realizing and denying this paradox can have violent, even genocidal, manifestations. Despite humanism’s interest in universal human dignity, the founding dichotomies of mind/body and human/animal, as well as the desire to assert one’s human status through repressing inherent “animality,” creates the need for and the legitimatization of the “dehumanization” of groups of Homo sapiens – for example, women, children, the disabled or infirm, the non-white, non-Western European, non-heterosexual, non- sexually binary, and/or non-Christian – who have been and still are categorized using hierarchical, pseudo-scientific, species-based classifications. Related binaries – of culture/nature, male/female, ⁷ masculine/feminine, rational/instinctual (or emotional), objective reality/subjective perception, and truth/artifice – not only help to shape humanist epistemologies of teleological progress and improvement, but can be co-opted into these dehumanizing and disempowering practices through the discourse of species. Subsequently, the process of challenging representations of species boundaries also includes deconstructing these related binaries. The result of this analysis is the

Indeed, Darwin applies his own theory of natural selection to the “lowest savages” and “natives” of colonized lands,

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whom, Darwin argues, are not “so perfectly adapted to each other and to the physical conditions under which they live, that none of them could anyhow be improved; for in all countries, the natives have been so far conquered by naturalized productions, that they have allowed foreigners to take firm possession of their land” (emphasis added; 564, 602). This project is not a defense of Darwin’s racist (and sexist) beliefs (beliefs which were common in the nineteenth century).

Rather, any discussion of species – whether to support or to undermine their boundaries – would be hard-pressed to proceed without indicating Darwin’s significant contributions. That said, the benefits of undermining species categories extend to undermining the very same hierarchies of “development” and “higher” and “lower” species which have historically and contemporaneously been weaponized to violate the autonomy and safety of marginalized groups of humans as well as nonhumans.

formation of an alternative, posthumanist, even zoecentric, epistem-ontology of the human subject ⁸ and its relations with the world, its co-partner(s) in the endless process of becoming-human.

With the aim of decentering human exceptionalism through the deconstruction of humanist binaries and value systems, this project uses the post-structural and “animal” theories of Jacques Derrida (namely, his methods of deconstruction and the theories of “carnophallogocentrism” and

“the logic of sacrifice”) and of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (“becoming-animal,” “lines of flight,” and de/reterritorialization), the companion species or “compost” theories of Donna Haraway, and, beginning in Part II, the Anishinaabe philosophy, moral directive, and aesthetic guide of mino-bimaadiziwin, alongside Anishinaabe theories of language and literary form and performance. All of these terms will be defined and discussed in detail in chapters one and four, which outline the theoretical frameworks of Parts I and II, respectively. However, some of these terms appear in the ensuing scholarly review of Atwood’s trilogy; for convenience, then, the terms are briefly defined here. Derrida’s concept of “carnophallogocentrism” has been succinctly summarized by Carol Adams as “an attempt to name the primary social, linguistic, and material practices that go into becoming and remaining a genuine subject within the West. [Derrida] suggests that, in order to be recognized as a full subject one must be a meat eater, a man, and an authoritative, speaking self” (Adams 1990, 6; see also Derrida 1991). Carnophallogocentrism relies, Derrida makes clear, on the “logic of sacrifice,” which he claims is the foundation of practically all of Western philosophy, from Augustine and Descartes to “the thinking of Kant, Heidegger, Lacan, and Levinas” (2008, 91). The “logic of sacrifice” sets out that “within a human space … exercising

The term “posthumanist” is used carefully in this project for several reasons. First and foremost, Anishinaabe

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epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies were never humanist. Therefore, they cannot be “post”-humanist, in the sense of coming “after” humanism. “Ahumanist” is applicable in these cases, though, in Part II, I refrain from using the term “humanism” or “humanist” wherever possible. Second, Donna Haraway makes clear in When Species Meet (2008) and Staying with the Trouble (2016) that she does not consider her work to be located in the field of posthumanism, preferring her own terminology of “companion species” or “compost” (discussed shortly). Nevertheless, in some sections and chapters, it becomes necessary to refer to an epistemology and ontology that stems from humanism, but alters it, removing the barriers and hierarchies of humanism in order to include philosophical and moral consideration of those deemed “not human.” In these cases, I use the terms “posthuman” and “posthumanist,” specifically to mean

“after-humanism.”

power over the animal to the point of being able to put it to death when necessary is not forbidden” (ibid). This “[p]ower over the animal,” Derrida continues, “is the essence of the ‘I’ or the

‘person,’ the essence of the human…”; that is, the carnophallogocentric subject is made possible because of the logic of sacrifice (93). In contrast to this recognition of human subjectivity based upon exclusion and “sacrifice,” Deleuze and Guattari’s “becoming-animal” is, Sherryl Vint writes,

“one of many examples Deleuze and Guattari use to articulate a transformative politics of subjectivity” (emphasis added; 52). In A Thousand Plateaus (1988), Deleuze and Guattari explain that “becoming-animal” is not an imitation of one entity by another, but is rather a “symbiosis” of heterogeneous agents united in constant exchange through affect, or what bodies are capable of.

These connections, or “multiplicities” (on a larger scale, multiple multiplicities conjoin to become assemblages), are formed in part through contagion and infection. These connecting processes act as “lines of flight” which allow, in one example, “a virus [to] connect to germ cells and transmit itself …: moreover, it can take flight, move into the cells of an entirely different species… (282;

emphasis added; 9). “Lines of flight” are, then, creative forms of escape from the metaphysics of presence and of stable identities – such as the carnophallogocentric subject based on sacrifice of a known “other” – towards an understanding of the individual and the world as constantly in flux, or becoming.

Similarly, Haraway theorizes, across a number of texts, that the individual human subject is a “permanently partial identit[y],” which is formed/forming through the mutual, co-constructive processes of “companion species” (2016a, 15). “Companion species,” differentiated from

“companion animals,” are all those beings with whom individuals are co-forming all the time; it is, Haraway writes, “a bigger and more heterogeneous category than companion animal, and not just because one must include such organic beings as rice, bees, tulips, and intestinal flora, all of whom make life for humans what it is – and vice versa” (2003, 15). Essentially, companion species are a heterogeneous assemblage formed by “becoming-with” that cuts across species categories and

familial kinship lines, creating an identity that is inherently co-constituted by such diverse entities as the aforementioned “rice, bees, tulips, and intestinal flora.” Essentially, for Haraway, everything comes into being through relationships; these relationships (“becomings-with”) form companion species (7). When writing about these relationships, Haraway often refers to “material-semiotic entities” which are simultaneously physical and figurative expressions of becomings-with. In a particularly explicit definition of her terminology, Haraway explains that her “[material-semiotic]

entities – primate, cyborg, genetically engineered patented animal – all of them are ‘real’ in the ordinary everyday sense of real, but they are also simultaneously figurations involved in a kind of narrative interpellation into ways of living in the world” (2000, 140). This emphasis on the inseparability of fleshly being and figural expression stems, she repeatedly explains, from her Catholic upbringing. Though she no longer follows the tenets of Catholicism, Haraway’s methodology employs the same “fundamental sensibility about the literal nature of metaphor and the physical quality of symbolization” as found in the “Catholic relationship to the Eucharist” (141).

The umbrella under which Haraway later categorized her formulations of material-semiotic entities and of the “individual” as a heterogeneous assemblage of companion species is “compost,” a term Haraway adopts in Staying with the Trouble as a counter to posthumanism, a term and field she finds, at times, problematic.

Another alternative to posthumanism – one which shares many theoretical aspects with Haraway’s “compostism” but which builds out and offers nuance, detail, and form to Haraway (and Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari’s) theories of interconnectivity – is the Anishinaabe philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin. Defined by D’Arcy Rheault as “the way of the good life,” mino-bimaadiziwin is performed by recognizing and acting respectfully and appropriately in accordance with one’s relationships with one’s “companion species” (Rheault 104). But unlike the previous theorizations, mino-bimaadiziwin implicitly sets out how one should be, act, and understand the world on a daily and a life-long basis; as Lawrence Gross explains, mino-bimaadiziwin

suggests such actions as rising with the sun and retiring with the same. Further, bimaadiziwin governs human relations as well, stressing the type of conduct appropriate between individuals, and the manner in which social life is to be conducted. Bimaadiziwin also covers the relationship with the broader environment. So, for example, it teaches the necessity of respecting all life, from the smallest insects upwards. One thing about bimaadiziwin, however, it that the teaching does not exist as a definitive body of law. Instead, it is left up to the individual to develop an understanding of bimaadiziwin through careful attention to the teaching wherever it can be found. (2014, 207).

Mino-bimaadiziwin identifies the relationships which govern everything from the individual’s relationship with the cosmos to a small insect; its teachings are found in books and songs as well as the movement of the planets and the relationships between the seasons and the environment.

Broadly speaking, in its central lesson of interconnectivity on micro- and macro-levels of being, it speaks to the more abstract theories of becoming and becoming-with while refusing the anthropocentrism which would permit carnophallogocentrism. Despite, then, their differences in methods, epistemological foundations, and theoretical priorities, the guiding theories of my project can be read together in terms of their mutual prioritization of inherent multiplicity, or hybridity, and shared being-in-the-world, as well as the processes of proliferation and flourishing of all lifeforms, as opposed to stable, essential individuals or beings, who are placed in a constructed, oppositional, and hierarchical relationship and directed along a teleological path towards human advancement.

Augmenting this theoretical framework, the terminology and analytical methods of Gérard Genette and, in Part II, Mikhail Bakhtin are used to conduct a close narratological analysis of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy, comprised of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). Bakhtin’s theories of heteroglossia, polyphony, and dialogism are discussed ⁹ in detail in relation to MaddAddam, because it, in particular among the three novels, is uniquely influenced in form and content by the relationship between the embedded storyteller and the implied audience as well as the preceding two novels. Furthermore, Bakhtin provides a potent

The first two novels of the trilogy will hereafter be referred to as Crake and Flood. MaddAddam will not be

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abbreviated.

contact zone between the epistemological and ontological perspectives of post-stucturalists like Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari, posthumanists/compostists like Donna Haraway (as well as Stengers, Bennett, Braidotti, and Wolfe), and Anishinaabe theorists and philosophers like Gross and Rheault as well as Scott Lyons and Margaret Noodin, all of whom argue in some manner that the individual, and their voice, is comprised of a constantly-becoming assemblage with humans, nonhumans, and other-than-humans (such as agential, interactive language). Approaching this ontology from another angle, Bakhtin finds that language, too, is comprised of these assemblages, as the “life of a word is contained in its transfer from one mouth to another, from one context to another context, from one social collective to another, from one generation to another generation” (Bakhtin 1984, 202). Thus, Bakhtin’s theories highlight the many similarities shared between the diverse theoretical approaches which come together in chapters five, six, and seven.

In contrast, Genettian narratology is used extensively throughout the analytical chapters of Parts I and II (chapters one through three and five through seven). It may seem counter-intuitive to structuralists to use narratology in my deconstructionist project, but when applied to post-structural theories, a narratological methodology provides the necessary stability, (largely) understood terminology, and analytical approach with which to address the constant slippage and purposeful ambiguity at work within Atwood’s texts, without totalizing or closing off alternative avenues of investigation and argumentation. For my purposes then, I use Genette’s terminology to address and identify the nature of Atwood’s narrative strategies and forms in order to explore and explain in detail the significance and relevance of these elements in the trilogy, as these elements and forms relate to my overall argument. Genette’s terminology acts as a guide and a glossary through which to “study the form and functioning of narrative” and to make my analyses and references understandable to readers (Prince 4). I do not, however, attempt to fix one meaning to the narrative,

though do I maintain a fixed meaning of the terms I use throughout this project. On the contrary, ¹⁰ perhaps the most significant aspect of these novels, especially in light of my focus on hybridity, multiplicity, and interconnectivity, is Atwood’s use of narrative ambiguity. Leaving open the possibility for alternative readings is more than simply refuting an untenable aim of structuralist

“Truth” (which runs counter to the theoretical framework of this project). Instead, my reliance on Genettian terminology acts as an invitation for collaboration and dialogism with other scholars who may find similar or dissimilar significance in, for example, Atwood’s fragmented protagonist, the anonymous narrative perspective of the third novel, or the metalepsis resulting from mixing indirect and direct discourse. In this way, I hope to initiate and support a “companionship with stories” and with other authors, as proposed by Eva Marie Garroutte (Cherokee) and Kathleen Delores Westcott (Anishinaabe/Cree), in their reading of Arthur Frank’s theory of “dialogic narratology,” which

“implies an ethical demand for openness to the difference of the other, both recognizing what is different and also respecting the need to sustain the difference, not assimilate or finalize it” (Frank, qtd. in Garroutte and Westcott 62). This openness to difference – via an invitation to collaborate by avoiding essentializing or closing down other possible interpretations and analyses of Atwood’s trilogy – does not so much differ from a Genettian methodology, but relies upon it, as a more universal framework through which to indicate and analyze Atwood’s inventive use of narrative elements and forms.

To this end, the narratological approach highlights the extent to which Atwood’s speculative fiction trilogy (and her only trilogy to date) is pivotal to this project. Beyond the novels’ depictions of genetic hybridity, human biomedical and technological innovation, and the anthropocentric abuse of the “natural” world, the novels narratively perform the blurring of humanist boundaries and binaries. Furthermore, the interconnecting relationship within and between the novels, as well as the

Where I differ from Genette, such as in retaining “first-“ and “third-person” narrative while also identifying the

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narrator as homodiegetic and/or heterodiegetic, I use footnotes to clarify my own use of these terms.

trilogy’s form of narrative resolution, offers perhaps Atwood’s boldest gesture towards a more environmentally balanced, zoecentric world, one in which the “individual” is understood to be deeply connected and responsible to other lifeforms around and within them. Finding such a harmonious and productive balance, or a “third thing,” is a key concern to Atwood: not only is she a noted environmental activist, she has commented on the need for dualistic balance in interviews dating back decades, to the point that Sherrill Grace argues that “violent duality” and non-binarism are structuring principles throughout Atwood’s poetry and prose (for activism, see Hatch 197-99 and Winstead 241; for “third thing” in interviews, see Gibson 26 and Langer 162; for “third thing”

as structure and symbol, see Grace 1980, and Grace and Weir 1983). Consequently, the novels ¹¹ present a rich textual landscape through which to challenge and offer ahumanist alternatives to conventional Euro-American ideologies and ontologies of human exceptionalism, individualism, autopoiesis, and autonomy. My project’s theoretical and methodological combination of post- structuralism, “compostism,” Anishinaabe epistem-ontologies, and narratology together allow me to argue that Atwood’s trilogy is a deeply complex, highly detailed dramatization of the contemporary scientific and cultural consensus that the “individual” human is always in the process of becoming- human through their constant relating – beneficial, lethal, or neutral – with the other-than-human world. In short, the MaddAddam trilogy, in its storyworld and narrative structure, offers a narratological homology with the profound relations that are forming the extradiegetic world, as it is currently understood.

Building on her thesis that “violent duality” is a guiding trope for Atwood’s poetry, prose, and nonfiction criticism,

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Grace specifies that “[w]ith Atwood, however, duality must be understood as dynamic, not static, because she is concerned, not simply with the fact of Western dichotomies, but with the process of overcoming the polarization of world and self, as well as the hierarchical power structures which such divisions produce” (emphasis added; Grace and Weir 1983, 7). Later, Grace emphasizes her point, unequivocally stating that Atwood’s work “rests upon resistance to a Cartesian model…” (14ft.9).

SECTION C: SITUATINGTHE PROJECTIN ANIMAL STUDIES

Despite its growing popularity across a vast array of academic fields and popular media, “animal studies” remains nebulous and difficult to define. As Cary Wolfe appropriately writes, “[t]rying to give an overview of the burgeoning area known as animal studies is, if you’ll permit me the expression, a bit like herding cats” (2009, 564). The difficulty lies in the field’s inherent interdisciplinarity, which is arguably one of its defining features. In her impressive survey of the field, Marge DeMello offers perhaps the most straightforward definition:

Human-animal studies (HAS) – sometimes known as anthrozoology or animal studies – is an interdisciplinary field that explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the interactions humans have with them.

Central to this field is an exploration of the ways in which animal lives intersect with human societies. … Human-animal studies and the related field of critical animal studies are the only scholarly disciplines to take seriously and place prominently the relationships between human and nonhuman animals, whether real or virtual. (4, 7) ¹²

DeMello’s definition is useful as it not only identifies the field’s lack of agreement on terminology, but places the focus squarely on the “relationships between humans and nonhuman animals,” which

The interdisciplinary nature is often explicitly or implicitly noted by other scholars. Susan McHugh finds that animal

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studies is “an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that coalesces around questions of representation and agency, or the

‘unnatural’ history of species” (6). Kalof and Fitzgerald’s anthology, The Animals Reader (2007), includes texts from classical philosophy to contemporary science, prehistorical hunter-gathering to second-wave feminism and factory farming, and modern protests against vivisection to cutting-edge genetic cloning. Yet more scholars look towards the links between animal studies and earlier forms of critical theory, such as Carrie Rohman’s focus on the link between animal studies and post-structuralism, an approach I address in my theoretical framework (Rohman 9). In contrast, Vint aligns human-animal studies and science fiction (SF) with the fields’ shared interest in humanity’s “ethical duty to non- humans with whom we share the planet,” reflecting the long history between philosophy and nonhuman life (2). Colleen Boggs defines animal studies by writing that “[a]t its core, animal studies asks what happens when we include other species in our understanding of subjectivity,” dividing animal studies into two branches based in the social sciences and the humanities (3). Likewise, and more broadly, Anat Pick explains that “[a]nimal studies at its most ambitious could be thought as a way of reshaping (contracting) the humanities and social science under the sign of dehumanization” (6).

These different definitions are all subtly linked to each author’s respective argumentative focus: Pick’s interest in literary and cinematic representations of “creaturely” vulnerability through embodiment; Bogg’s interest in the (non)fictional sexual interrelations between humans and nonhumans as the site of biopolitical power and subject formation; Vint’s interest in joining the ostensibly unrelated fields of animal studies and science fiction to show that the point of mutual interest is (overcoming) alienation and estrangement. My interest in emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of animal studies – especially between the life sciences and narratology – is similarly linked to my own thesis regarding literary representations of the always-already hybrid nature of the human “individual.”