After the Earth : new postsingularity scenarios

After the Earth : new postsingularity scenarios

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After the Earth : new postsingularity scenarios

Bibliographic description

title:	After the Earth : new postsingularity scenarios
alternative title:	Po Ziemi : nowe scenariusze po końcu świata
author:	Sugiera Małgorzata
editor:	Kusek Robert , Piątek Beata , Szymański Wojciech
book title:	Aftermath : the fall and the rise after the event
date of publication :	2019
place of publication : name of publisher:	Kraków : Jagiellonian University Press
pages:	93-106
ISBN:	978-83-233-4718-7
eISBN:	978-83-233-7002-4
series:	Topomo / Topographies of (Post)modernity : studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature in English
notes:	Recenzowane materiały w konferencji: "Aftermath : the fall and the rise after the event", dn. 25-27 października 2018 r., Kraków. Artykuł powstał w ramach projektu: "Performances of memory: testimonial, reconstructive and counterfactual strategies in literature and performative arts of the 20th and 21st centuries". Strona wydawcy: https://www.wuj.pl
language:	English
book language:	English
abstract in English:	Human cultures have imagined the disarticulation of the spatio-temporal frameworks of history in a variety of documented ways. However, some new or emphatically modified apocalyptic scenarios have appeared since the late 1990s, when the ongoing rapid changes in the planet’s thermodynamic regime became scientifically established and a new epoch in Earth’s history was introduced. Nevertheless, it is not the aim of my article to present manifold apocalyptic visions, symptomatic of the present state of economic and ecological predicament in the face of a fast approaching singularity. Rather I intend to take a closer look at how a future after the Earth we used to know has been imagined in the last ten-odd years. Bearing in mind that the very idea of human species has been put in question by the eco-eco-crisis, I present in my article a few example of two strains of SF literature and films that concentrate upon how we will morph into another posthuman species. One of these strains shows a comeback of the world as it existed until the sixth day of creation—a world as a stage set for the re-arrival of humankind, the main actor, this time born in vitro and fathered by classic Hollywood movies. This scenario can be found in Jacek Dukaj’s "Starość Aksolotla" or in J. S. Morin’s novel cycle "Robot Geneticists", which features various developmental stages of human-machine hybrids. The other strain denounces, by contrast, the perspective of Eden revisited and instead shows a life on the damaged planet, like in Philip Reeve’s novel trilogy "Predator Cities" or in the Japanese anima "Blame!". Both strains demonstrate that Donna Haraway was right when insisting on multiple meanings of SF which can also stand for speculative fabulation - stories with multispecies players that teach us how to stay with the trouble in times when abnormality has become the norm not only in the domain of climate.
keywords in Polish:	apokaliptyczne scenariusze, technologiczna osobliwość, zmiany klimatu, postludzkie gatunki, ludzko-maszynowe hybrydy, życie na zniszczonej planecie, spekulatywna fabulacja
keywords in English:	apocalyptic scenarios, technological singularity, climat changes, posthuman species, human-machine hybrids, a life on the damaged planet, speculative fabulation
number of pulisher's sheets:	0,85
affiliation:	Wydział Polonistyki : Katedra Performatyki
type:	chapter
subtype:	academic paper