Mapping Identity And Space In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx And Crake Cover Image

Mapiranje identiteta i prostora u romanu Gazela i kosac Margaret Atwood
Mapping Identity And Space In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx And Crake

Author(s): Ksenija M. Kondali
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Bosansko filološko društvo
Keywords: speculative fiction; futuristic novel; postmodernist dystopia; identity; sense of place; spatiality; zones; power; gated communities; ontological insecurity

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake in terms of the role of space in shaping identity and the effects of power in mapping identity and space. The novel has received considerable attention by readers and critics due to its thematic considerations which have earned it different genre designations (speculative fiction, futuristic novel, postmodernist dystopia). The focus of the discussion in this paper relates primarily to the ways in which new geographies are constructed in the postapocalyptic and posthumanist world portrayed in this novel. The interpretation of spatial categories and and relations is based on the ideas of several leading spatial theorists, in particular on Brian McHale’s concept of the zone. Understanding the zone as a site of ontological alteration, the paper explores its instance as parallel worlds: the space of elitist gated communities (Compounds) and space of the city (pleeblands).

  • Issue Year: 2012
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 205-215
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Bosnian