Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction

Jennifer Harrison is instructor of English at East Stroudsburg University.

• Introduction: Young Adult Dystopia and the Posthuman PerspectiveChapter 1: Carrie Ryan’s Forest of Hands and Teeth: Sex, Infection and HopelessnessChapter 2: Lois Lowry’s The Giver: Biotechnology, Wilderness, and GovernmentChapter 3: Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking Trilogy: Language and the Non-Human OtherChapter 4: Neal Shusterman’s Unwind: Posthuman Recycling and the Death of the HeroChapter 5: Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines Series: Posthumanism, Evolution, Apocalypse, and TimeChapter 6: Adam Rapp’s Decelerate Blue: Solarpunk, Consumerism, and the Posthumanist FutureConclusion: Young Adult Dystopia and the Posthuman Perspective

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.