JEANETTE WINTERSON’S THE STONE GODS: VOICING A POSTMODERNIST EMBODIMENT

Abstract

Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) displays a new conceptualization of the body that tends to disfigure the unified perception of human subjectivity. In this fashion, Winterson renders a posthuman concept of the body that resists the notions of origin or end. Accordingly, The Stone Gods is a manifestation of posthuman bodies that transgress the boundaries and are in a ceaseless condition of becoming. In this sense, the posthuman body is not a stable and predetermined concept but rather it embodies continual change with an ability to produce alternative possibilities. Winterson’s perception of the posthuman body aligns well with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “becoming-revolutionary” through which they defy any kind of static conceptualization including human subjectivity. Within the Deleuzoguattarian perspective, becoming operates through making “assemblages” including human/machine, human/animal, and human/plant. The alliance that is formed by the process of making each assemblage produces multiplicities of bodies including the posthuman body. This type of body is neither human nor nonhuman, but it shapes a unique thisness, “haecceity” in Deleuzoguattarian terms, that is beyond gender and origin. Thus, the posthuman body acts as a threshold that allows the rhizomatic movement from one body to another one.