“Making Kin in Broken Places”. Post-apocalyptic Adolescence and Care in Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne

Abstract

This article attempts to place Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Borne (2017) in the context of the New Weird, and more broadly within the tradition of speculative fiction represented by the Weird and the Gothic. The aim of this is also to bring into focus the role of genre fiction in diagnosing the uncanny underside of its times. In the present context, the key issue is to develop new models of subjectivity that would embrace a trans-species, less anthropocentric and more ecological model of caring and “making kin”. This phrase references Donna Haraway’s project, which is argued to dovetail with VanderMeer’s conclusions, defining the article’s ethical premise, formulated around the theme of adolescence in a post-apocalyptic setting.