Creatio Fantastica (Nov 2017)
Seks i przemoc w cyberprzestrzeni: spekulatywna wizja Margaret Atwood w powieści „Oryks i Derkacz”
Abstract
The paper Sex and Oppresion in Cyberspace: A Speculative Vision in Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” Novel analyzes Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake in reference to the issues of violence and sex as present in the cyberspace. Before focusing on these two problems, generic outline is introduced, starting from the commonly used categories of utopia/eutopia/dystopia to those more closely associated with Atwood herself, i.e. speculative fiction and ustopia. Violent internet games and explicit pornography act in the novel as sign of ethical reevaluation, which in the long run leads the novel’s world to the verge of a total catastrophe. At the same time, the overabundance of such on-line stimuli becomes synonymous with our contemporary culture of exhaustion.