Posthumanism and compassion in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy: a vegetarian, ecofeminist approach

Abstract

"Both the genre of VanderMeer’s trilogy and the theme of the posthuman operate in a chiasmic relationship to convey a clear teaching that evokes a powerful message about humanity, posthumanity, and the future of the planet. I argue that the Southern Reach trilogy illustrates the duality of the term posthumanism: Characters exceed what it means to be human in a biological sense, and in an ethical sense, certain characters become posthuman in that they accept a mode of thinking that does not invariably place the human at the center. My argument outlines two very different ways of using the term posthuman, yet also illustrates the commonalities between each of my applications, thus creating a means of applying the posthuman lens as a tool for approaching literary texts."