“A New Race of Immortals”: A Posthumanist Reading of “Poe Posthumous; or, the Light-House”

Xinshuo Zhou; Quan Wang

doi:10.25159/1753-5387/11259

Authors

Xinshuo Zhou Beihang University
Quan Wang Beihang University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5848-4368

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/11259

Keywords:

Light-House, knowledge, posthumanism, nonhuman, coexistence

Abstract

This article proposes a posthumanist reading of Joyce Carol Oates’s “Poe Posthumous; or, The Light-House,” and argues that posthumanism provides human beings with a new way of living. In the story, the narrator comes to the Light-House at Viña de Mar to participate in a scientific experiment. As an “exemplary specimen of Homo sapiens,” the narrator endeavours to preserve human knowledge, which symbolises his superiority over nonhuman species. However, on becoming further involved in nature, he gradually abandons his anthropocentric thought, and learns to live with other species. The posthumanist thought finds its full expression in the symbiotic coexistence of multiple species and culminates in the narrator’s cross-species marriage to a female Cyclophagus. The juxtaposition of the decentring of anthropocentrism with the ascent of nonhuman agents highlights the posthumanist coexistence of humans and nonhumans.

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Author Biography

Quan Wang, Beihang University

Quan Wang is professor of English at Beihang University, Beijing. He has published 27 articles in A&HCI journals. His recent publications include “A Posthumanist Reading of ‘The Sphinx’’” (Nordic Journal of English Studies), “Narrative Disruption” (Journal of Literary Studies), “A Posthumanist Reading of Knowledge in Zhuangzi and Lacan” (Asian Philosophy), “A Comparative Study of the Subject in Lacan and Zhuangzi” (Asian Philosophy), “A Lacanian Reading of RIP” (Explicator), “The Movement of the Letter in A Doll House” (Journal of European Studies), “The Lack of Lack” (Women’s Studies). Professor Wang specializes in critical theories, American novels, and Zhuangzi, especially Edgar Allan Poe, posthumanism, psychoanalysis. He is also a 2015-2016 China-US Fulbright Research Scholar to Yale University.

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