Den postmoderne Prometheus

Natur, teknik och transtematik i Jeanette Wintersons Frankissstein

Abstract

The Postmodern Prometheus: Nature, Technology and Transgender Themes in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein

This is a trans ecological analysis of the transgender motif in Jeanette Winterson’s novel Frankissstein: A Love Story, a novel about
transhumanism, artificial intelligence and the human relationships to the body as natureand as technology. I examine how the transgender character in Frankissstein relates to ideas about nature-culture, biology-technology, and mind-body. Drawing from new materialist theory, the essay examines the possibilites of a materialist trans ecology that understands both identitites and bodies as constructed. The essay demonstrates that the transgender character Ry Shelley is a hybrid character, combining male-female, biologytechnology and nature-culture in a single person. While the other major character, Victor Stein, detests the material and wants to become pure mind, the narrator Ry Shelley shows the importance of the body and becomes
an illustration of how human identity is not just a discursive construction, but also a biological and technical-material construction. In Frankissstein the transgender character is a defense of the material human being, and an example of how all humans are hybrids.