POSTHUMANIST FICTION - ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FUTURE

Resumen

Posthumanism, a philosophical and cultural current to which American researchers (Neil Badmington, 2000; Carry Wolfe, 2010; Stefan Herbrechter, 2013, etc.) have dedicated a number of studies and which takes poststructuralism as a reference, treats different forms of life modified by technological progress. These forms of life, reviewed from a cognitive and anthropological point of view, intrigues contemporary writers. In the book Fictions posthumanistes (Hermann, 2022), I have shown that writers are interested in questions that were previously considered to be treated preferably by science fiction and by dystopia.
This article focuses on the novel written by Jean-Gabriel Ganascia alias Gabriel Naëj (Ce matin, maman a été téléchargée, Paris, Éditions Buchet-Chastel, 2019) and on the rereading that Jean-Gabriel Ganascia himself gives of this novel in his latest essay Servitudes virtuelles (Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2022). The posthumanist fiction of the author Naëj thus acquires a pedagogical or didactic function: the character of Michèle Vidal is used by the researcher Ganascia to explain the potential consequences induced by the variability of scientific data. Fiction also allows him to introduce notions such as digital metensomatosis, dictatorship of orins and to speculate with sarcasm and irony on downloading, body reintegration, body/mind dissociation and thus to challenge the credibility of several very real people who acquire a fictional identity in his novel (mad scientist Dr. Marco Varvogliss is Ray Kuzweil’s novelistic alter ego).