Facing the Bankruptcy of Capitalism: The Conclusion of Margaret Atwood’s "MaddAddam" Trilogy as a Posthumanist Utopia

Abstract

In his article, Kacper Tochowicz analyses and interprets the ending of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy. He focuses on the idea of utopia in postapocalyptic literature as a method of negating the systemic assumptions of late capitalism. Taking this context into account, Tochowicz reads the trilogy in the perspective of posthumanist discourse’s search for human and non-human subjectivity. In terms of methodology, Tochowicz’s analysis is based, on the one hand, on the critique of capitalism and, on the other, on the philosophy of posthumanism. Hence, the most important sources of this approach are Fredric Jameson’s reflections of on the place of utopia in the contemporary world and the philosophical theories of Rosi Braidotti and Bruno Latour. Tochowicz’s main goals are, first, to show how Atwood’s novels can be considered as posthumanist utopias, and, to inquire about the role non-human beings in MaddAddam in relation to Homo sapiens. The interpretation’s aim is to describe the mechanisms governing a world in which man no longer occupies a central position.