This thesis discusses two novels that use the dystopian genre to critically reflect on the political and social response to 9/11: Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013) and Cormac McCarthy’s The...Show moreThis thesis discusses two novels that use the dystopian genre to critically reflect on the political and social response to 9/11: Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013) and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). These novels depict a United States that has been, or is going to be, devastated by a catastrophe that is seemingly, or in Pynchon’s case explicitly, inspired by 9/11 and the political and social response to it. This thesis examines how and with what effect these novels use dystopian themes and imagery to respond to the way American society is changed socially and politically because of political efforts to unify it and security measures that were taken in response to 9/11, and critically reflect on the political and social consequences of the attacks.Show less
This thesis examines how Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist addresses and interrogates structures of power that are present in society. It aims to show how the novel exposes and subverts...Show moreThis thesis examines how Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist addresses and interrogates structures of power that are present in society. It aims to show how the novel exposes and subverts dominant economic and cultural structures of power that are organized both through networks and hierarchies.Show less
This thesis examines the figures of the American Adam and American Eve, exploring how the American Eve can still be considered a problematic figure, despite being created by feminist critics to...Show moreThis thesis examines the figures of the American Adam and American Eve, exploring how the American Eve can still be considered a problematic figure, despite being created by feminist critics to free female characters in American literature. It specifically analyses two twentieth-century American novels, Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, and how the female characters in these novels are subversive figures, embodying a more flexible version of American femininity.Show less
This thesis studies two ground-breaking museum exhibitions that took place in New York in 1966 and 1969 respectively that played an important role in the construction of Jewish American and African...Show moreThis thesis studies two ground-breaking museum exhibitions that took place in New York in 1966 and 1969 respectively that played an important role in the construction of Jewish American and African American memory culture and identity construction.Show less
This thesis takes as its subject Octavia Butler’s science fiction trilogy Lilith’s Brood which it reads in the context of the neo-slave narrative, using the theoretical framework of posthumanism as...Show moreThis thesis takes as its subject Octavia Butler’s science fiction trilogy Lilith’s Brood which it reads in the context of the neo-slave narrative, using the theoretical framework of posthumanism as its angle of inquiry. Most criticism concerning Lilith’s Brood fails to adequately address the discursive tension in the work between these two competing discourses: posthumanism and the neo-slave narrative. The alien invasion in Dawn for example is figured in highly contradictory terms. On the one hand it is cast in the historically grounded and emotionally charged, racialized terms of American slavery and oppression, on the other hand it is embraced as an occasion for a long overdue, radical transformation of the humanist subject into a posthuman one. The question of how these two discourses conflict and interact with each other is one that this thesis engages at length by analyzing the way Lilith’s Brood reconfigures three foundational concepts that are found in humanist philosophy – rationality, autonomy, and authenticity. According to posthumanism these virtues on which the humanist subject is founded delineate a narrow and exclusionary concept of the human. In Lilith’s Brood however they are reconfigured in order to extend to non-human creatures as well. At the same time this reconfiguration of subjectivity also more accurately describes the human condition when it is exposed in the light of posthumanism and stripped of its humanist pretentions. Each chapter takes one of the novels in the trilogy and demonstrates how it deconstructs one of these foundational concept: autonomy, authenticity and rationality. At the same time the themes of slavery and subjection run as a red thread throughout the work, at times corroborating Lilith’s Brood’s posthumanist message, at times problematizing it. In keeping these themes foregrounded the trilogy gives full expression to the struggle and danger that accompanies change, bravely acknowledging troublesome conclusions such as the inevitable inequality that haunts all power relations and the necessity of sacrifice.Show less
