Page - 46 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

planet and its ecology is engrained in his apocalyptic deed, mirroring a funda- mentally different map of morality which has common ground with the Volun- tary Human Extinction Movement and human extinction as the new eco-uto- pia, as well as with the God’s Gardeners’ belief. The future world turns out to be quite different from how Crake had intended it to be, as the Crakers could not be rid of artistic production, storytelling and myth creation, and share their world with the surviving human and non-human creatures, as well as with other hybrids. The post-apocalyptic world can thus be interpreted as coming close to a posthumanist utopia – or in Gardener terms, a posthumanist Eden. A POSTHUMANIST EDEN The post-apocalyptic setting of the MaddAddam Trilogy has already been dis- cussed against the philosophical backdrop of posthumanism by critics like Va- leria Mosca, who argues that Atwood stages not the end of humanity but “the end of ‘the human’ as it is traditionally conceived”.56 Posthumanism in this sense has to be distinguished radically from transhumanism as it provides an attempt to overcome humanist anthropocentrism in favour of non-human agents and subjectivities, as well as systemic ways of thinking and relationality. According to Francesca Ferrando, “[p]osthumanism is a philosophy which provides a suit- able way of departure to think in relational and multi-layered ways, expanding the focus to the non-human realm in post-dualistic, post-hierarchical modes, thus allowing one to envision post-human futures which will radically stretch the boundaries of human imagination.”57 Posthumanist themes such as animal personhood and hybridity are taken up especially in MaddAddam, which depicts the post-apocalyptic scenery in more detail. The pigoons, as pigs with human brain tissue, provide a good example for posthumanist subjects and relations in the last novel: being a product of tech- nological alteration and a hybrid between human and animal, they become fully accepted members of the post-apocalyptic society and are granted subjectivity and agency. Instead of talking and writing about them in an objectified man- ner, as is usually the case with animals, Toby for instance corrects her narrative about Snowman-Jimmy clinging to a pigoon: “clinging to its back. Her back. The Pigoons were not objects. She had to get that straight. It was only respectful.”58 The pigoons are also given a voice, as the Crakers are able to communicate with them. The final book of the trilogy ends on a very positive note with a funeral in which different species take part and mourn their dead together: “The Pigoons wished to carry Adam and Jimmy to the site for us, as a sign of friendship and 56 Mosca 2013, 47. 57 Ferrando 2013, 30. 58 Atwood 2014, 350–351. 46 | Stephanie Bender www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50