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"Why Did I Live"

Åsling, Tora LU (2020) ENGK01 20192
English Studies
Abstract
This thesis studies how Mary Shelley and Meredith Ann Pierce criticise Western patriarchal societies through the depiction of the creation of artificial life. The thesis discusses how Shelley and Pierce’s critique consequently includes a critique of Humanism, since the school of thought had a pivotal role in the formation of the civilizational model of these Western societies. Steeped in anthropocentrism, Humanism places humans at the centre while it relies heavily on the binary opposition of self and other, human and animal, science and nature, male and female. Furthermore, due to speciesism, i.e. systematic prejudice on the basis of species, which is intrinsic to Humanism, nonhuman beings are consistently deemed inferior to humans. By... (More)
This thesis studies how Mary Shelley and Meredith Ann Pierce criticise Western patriarchal societies through the depiction of the creation of artificial life. The thesis discusses how Shelley and Pierce’s critique consequently includes a critique of Humanism, since the school of thought had a pivotal role in the formation of the civilizational model of these Western societies. Steeped in anthropocentrism, Humanism places humans at the centre while it relies heavily on the binary opposition of self and other, human and animal, science and nature, male and female. Furthermore, due to speciesism, i.e. systematic prejudice on the basis of species, which is intrinsic to Humanism, nonhuman beings are consistently deemed inferior to humans. By giving the creations – i.e. the nonhuman “others” of society – a voice, Shelley and Pierce highlight the fluctuating boundary between human and nonhuman beings, thus showing the errors of Humanism’s essentialist definition of the human and challenging its speciesism. This thesis shows that Shelley and Pierce favour Post-humanist values since they focus on the inter-connectedness of all living beings and urge the importance of valuing the familial and communal, as well as different forms of life. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Åsling, Tora LU
supervisor
organization
alternative title
A Comparative Study of the Depiction of Artificial Life in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Meredith Ann Pierce's The Darkangel Trilogy
course
ENGK01 20192
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
Mary Shelley, Meredith Ann Pierce, Humanism, Posthumanism, Anthropocentrism, Speciesism, Artificial Life
language
English
id
9012993
date added to LUP
2020-06-08 08:11:30
date last changed
2020-06-08 08:11:30
@misc{9012993,
  abstract     = {{This thesis studies how Mary Shelley and Meredith Ann Pierce criticise Western patriarchal societies through the depiction of the creation of artificial life. The thesis discusses how Shelley and Pierce’s critique consequently includes a critique of Humanism, since the school of thought had a pivotal role in the formation of the civilizational model of these Western societies. Steeped in anthropocentrism, Humanism places humans at the centre while it relies heavily on the binary opposition of self and other, human and animal, science and nature, male and female. Furthermore, due to speciesism, i.e. systematic prejudice on the basis of species, which is intrinsic to Humanism, nonhuman beings are consistently deemed inferior to humans. By giving the creations – i.e. the nonhuman “others” of society – a voice, Shelley and Pierce highlight the fluctuating boundary between human and nonhuman beings, thus showing the errors of Humanism’s essentialist definition of the human and challenging its speciesism. This thesis shows that Shelley and Pierce favour Post-humanist values since they focus on the inter-connectedness of all living beings and urge the importance of valuing the familial and communal, as well as different forms of life.}},
  author       = {{Åsling, Tora}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{"Why Did I Live"}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}