(Post)humanidad y alteridad en la narrativa reciente de ciencia ficción de nnedi okorafor y mike carey (2014-2021)

Abstract

This doctoral thesis analyses the representations of (post)humanity and alterity in several recent science fiction texts by Anglophone authors Nnedi Okorafor and Mike Carey. The corpus of this dissertation includes ten texts: Lagoon (2014), LaGuardia (2019) and the Binti trilogy (2015-2018), by Nnedi Okorafor, and The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), The Boy on the Bridge (2017) and the Rampart trilogy (2020-21), written by Mike Carey under the pseudonym M. R. Carey. My thesis explores how both authors provide new perspectives on the concept of (post)humanity at a time of technological development and environmental crisis in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when literature ¿ among many other artistic and non-artistic disciplines ¿ shows great interest in the relationship between the (post)human and the non-human ¿ be it animal, cyborg or alien ¿ and their relationship with the environment. The perspectives offered by Okorafor and Carey in the works analysed link the current ecological problems to the changes in human identity reflected in their texts, which stem from human responsibility for the environmental crisis and the mass extinction of species. For this reason, the concept of alterity is central to this thesis, as the selected narratives question anthropocentrism and propose a planetary model based on cooperation and the celebration of the diversity of identities. This thesis initially contextualises science fiction as a literary genre throughout history and connects it to the discipline of ecocriticism, focusing on the philosophical concepts of humanity and non-humanity, as well as culture and nature, which constitute the theoretical apparatus that articulates this research. Through a close reading of the selected texts, this thesis explores how (post)humanity is related to (post)nature and how the identity transformations of the characters they portray raise ethical questions about the (post)human treatment of the Other. The conclusions reached in this research emphasise the hopeful nature of the narratives analysed, which raise, in a way that is quite unusual in the science fiction genre, the possibility of a future where the (post)human can coexist with the Other in a (post)natural context on the basis of inclusion and cooperation. Despite the differences between the texts of both authors, they show connections in their representation of technology as a potential vehicle for the (re)construction of sustainable futures between (post)humans and their environment, even though the (post)natural world is depicted as a place of conflict and difficult adaptation which keeps latent anthropocentric undertones. Even so, the texts analysed seem to show an interest in decentralising the figure of the human and reflecting the importance of giving voice to other realities and identities. One of the conclusions reached in this thesis has to do with the important contribution of science fiction, a genre traditionally perceived as escapist and purely dedicated to entertainment, to the opening of new avenues of debate, not only from the field of ecocriticism, but also in twenty-first-century society and in the midst of ecological crisis, since it offers potential futures in which human beings can achieve a planetary balance through cooperative social projects that avoid the centrality of human experience.