The Emergent Posthuman Landscape in Ying Chen’s La rive est loin

Rodgers, Julie

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/qs.2019.19

Rodgers, Julie

Quebec Studies (2019), 68, (1), 101–120.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/qs.2019.19
Language: English
Pages: 20

Abstract

The last novel of what has been termed Ying Chen’s “série fantôme,” La rive est loin (2013), draws us further into a posthuman existence that has been consistently gestured towards since the publication of Immobile (1998) and concludes with a reconfiguration of space, place, and subjectivity that is inextricably intertwined with nature. This article proposes a metaphorical reading of the husband’s brain tumor and the disintegration of the house inhabited by Chen’s recurring couple as the gradual deconstruction of a monolithic human order in favor of a deeper eco-philosophical way of being in the world that is squarely aligned with Rosi Braidotti’s theory of the posthuman.

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Rodgers, Julie

Quebec Studies