From Pensive Vegetables to Feminine Men: The Dialogical Posthuman in Silko, Moure, and Jen

Abstract

[Abstract] Encouraging cross-genre and cross-culture dialogues, this paper examines the short fiction of Native-American Leslie Marmon Silko and Chinese-American Gish Jen, together with the poetry of European-Canadian Erín Moure. I perform a close reading of the texts’ formal devices—ellipses, non-linearity, hierarchy-reversal, symbolism—and topics—animal, spirit, vegetable, (wo)man—from posthumanism, ecofeminism, and Bakhtinian dialogics. This interdisciplinary approach, which may be called dialogical posthumanism, is demanded by the authors’ representations of (human) nature, which propose alternatives to humanist ideas and foster world peace. Dialogical posthumanism is helpful to analyze anthropocentrism, learn to relate ethically to other beings beyond man, and try to live in solidarity with all of them. My ultimate goal is to demonstrate that the dialogical posthuman in Silko, Moure, and Jen can challenge the current parameters of domination and generate the ideological changes, e.g. the “socio-ecolomic” (my term), which result in an ethical and hopeful world.