Transhuman and Post-human in The Stone Gods: The validation of the standardized body in Jeanette Winterson’s dystopia

Abstract

The Stone Gods (2012), written by Jeanette Winterson, presents a dystopian narrative space of the past, where the inhabitants of the planet Orbus, practically destroyed by human interventions, live for the genetic transformations and aesthetic improvements of their beautiful and young bodies. At the same time, there is a technological advance in the development of robots, being the most representative the sapiens robot, which is extremely intelligent and beautiful and with physical human characteristics. Thus, there are bodies distinct materially, however, visually similar from an ideal standard of beauty that encourages the change of bodies as a way of social adaptation. In this paper, we will analyze the relationship between body and technology, and what is the implication of those discussions for the studies of transhumanism and post-humanism from the altered bodies of the characters and the consequences of these alterations when thinking about the creation of an ideal body that promotes an erroneous idea of perfect health through technological interference.