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Hoping for Cyborgs : Cyborg Eco-Heroism, Odd Kinships, and Hopeful Heroics in Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans
Bickert, Lorena (2023): Hoping for Cyborgs : Cyborg Eco-Heroism, Odd Kinships, and Hopeful Heroics in Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans, in: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Debrecen, Jg. 29, Nr. 1, S. 34–57, doi: 10.30608/hjeas/2023/29/1/3.
Faculty/Chair:
Author:
Title of the Journal:
Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies
ISSN:
2732-0421
Corporate Body:
Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen
Publisher Information:
Year of publication:
2023
Volume:
29
Issue:
1
Pages:
Language:
English
Abstract:
Building on Donna Haraway’s advocacy for embracing “unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles” (Trouble 4), this paper reads Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans (2013) with a focus on how, in the face of profound environmental challenges, stereotypical narratives of heroism are transformed—like in a compost pile—through cyborg-elements. The essay argues that grounding hero stories in the techno-organismal entanglements of ecosystemic crisis, yields an explicitly instable, corporeal conception of heroism in/of crisis of eco-heroism. Reading Smith’s protagonists, Fen and Daniel, as eco-heroic cyborgs in conjunction with ideals of the traditional hero’s corporeal and affective superiority creates instances of hopeful heroics in the narrative that challenge supposedly stabilizing patterns of identification in traditional discourses of American heroism. This vision of cyborg eco-heroism in Orleans makes communicable an unpredictable and instable crisisstate, generating hope as a composted affect in this eco-heroic story of oddkin. (LB)
GND Keywords:
Smith, Sherri L.
Keywords: ; ; ; ; ;
eco-heroism
hopeful heroics
corporeality
cyborg
oddkin
affect studies
DDC Classification:
RVK Classification:
Peer Reviewed:
Yes:
International Distribution:
Yes:
Open Access Journal:
Yes:
Type:
Article
Activation date:
February 28, 2024
Versioning
Question on publication
Permalink
https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/93667