Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide

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Description

If there is one trend in childrens and YA literature that seems to be enjoying a steady rise in popularity, it is the expansion of the YA dystopian genre. While the genre has been lauded for its potential to expand horizons, promote critical thinking, and foster social awareness and activism, it has also come under scrutiny for its promotion of specific ideologies and its often sensationalist approach to real-world problems. In an examination of six YA dystopian texts spanning more than twenty years of development of the genre, this book explores the way in which posthumanist ideologies in particular are deployed or resisted in these texts as a means of making sense of the specific challenges which young people confront in the twenty-first century.

Reviews

Because it entails the erasure of borders between the individual, the collective, and the environment, the posthuman state, Harrison argues, is inimical to the bildungsroman narrative that has typically underpinned YA dystopias. Harrison's contribution to scholarship on posthumanism in YA literature is significant, and it lies in providing a framework for understanding the dystopian genre as a tool of posthuman inquiry, albeit one that is still struggling to liberate itself from the conventions of the bildungsroman.

* Children's Literature Association Quarterly *
Harrison offers an original and critical contribution to the study of dystopian young adult literature by focusing on pressing ethical concerns around the limits of humanism, environmental degradation, and the category of the human. This book will be a useful resource to scholars and general readers interested in YA literature, dystopia, ecocriticism, and critical posthumanism. -- Libe Garca Zarranz, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Harrison proposes a way of reading a broad range of dystopian fiction consistent with the present dilemmas and succeeds in demonstrating that the contemporary crisis of humanity has multifaceted portrayals in literature for young readers. * International Research in Childrens Literature *

Author Bio

Jennifer Harrison is instructor of English at East Stroudsburg University.