BIO
Oscar A. Pérez is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Skidmore College. His research focuses on science, technology, and the environment in Hispanic literature and film. His work has appeared in journals such as Hispania, Letras Hispanas, Imagofagia, and Film International. He is currently preparing a monograph on the relationship between authoritarianism and medicine in the Spanish-speaking world.
TITLE
“Technoanimalism in the Information Age: Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes”
ABSTRACT
In her second novel, Little Eyes (originally published in Spanish as Kentukis in 2018, English translation forthcoming in 2020), Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin examines the convergence of human, nonhuman animal, and machines in an era dominated by technology and global communication through social networks. Little Eyes is a novel at the confluence of multiple literary traditions and contemporary debates. On the one hand, it can be read as part of the tradition of science fiction, the fantastic, and the uncanny in Latin American literature. On the other, it is a text that participates in an open conversation about worldwide contemporary dilemmas, as well as the artistic expressions that examine them. The central figures of the novel, the “kentukis,” are artifacts that have recognizable animal forms, remote-controlled personal robots that serve as mediators in the relationship established between those who physically “have” a kentuki and those who “are” a kentuki, or, in other words, that control the machine from a remote location. I will propose a reading of the novel from the perspective of posthumanism, focusing on the relationships between humans, nonhuman animals, and machines; the notion of technoanimalism, as described by Rick Dolphijn and Tove Kjellmark, will be particularly useful in this sense. More precisely, I will describe how the author uses the liminal space between “having” and “being” a technoanimal, in the context of globalized consumerism, to destabilize notions of the human and nonhuman in our contemporary world.
EVENT
NYU Global Posthuman 2020
Oscar A. Pérez is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Skidmore College. His research focuses on science, technology, and the environment in Hispanic literature and film. His work has appeared in journals such as Hispania, Letras Hispanas, Imagofagia, and Film International. He is currently preparing a monograph on the relationship between authoritarianism and medicine in the Spanish-speaking world.
TITLE
“Technoanimalism in the Information Age: Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes”
ABSTRACT
In her second novel, Little Eyes (originally published in Spanish as Kentukis in 2018, English translation forthcoming in 2020), Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin examines the convergence of human, nonhuman animal, and machines in an era dominated by technology and global communication through social networks. Little Eyes is a novel at the confluence of multiple literary traditions and contemporary debates. On the one hand, it can be read as part of the tradition of science fiction, the fantastic, and the uncanny in Latin American literature. On the other, it is a text that participates in an open conversation about worldwide contemporary dilemmas, as well as the artistic expressions that examine them. The central figures of the novel, the “kentukis,” are artifacts that have recognizable animal forms, remote-controlled personal robots that serve as mediators in the relationship established between those who physically “have” a kentuki and those who “are” a kentuki, or, in other words, that control the machine from a remote location. I will propose a reading of the novel from the perspective of posthumanism, focusing on the relationships between humans, nonhuman animals, and machines; the notion of technoanimalism, as described by Rick Dolphijn and Tove Kjellmark, will be particularly useful in this sense. More precisely, I will describe how the author uses the liminal space between “having” and “being” a technoanimal, in the context of globalized consumerism, to destabilize notions of the human and nonhuman in our contemporary world.
EVENT
NYU Global Posthuman 2020
