Dehumanised Humanity, Super-Flu and the Sad Fate of Cranes: What Is Life Like on Planet Friedman? Cover Image

Ludzkość odczłowieczona, supergrypa i smutny los żurawi. Jak się żyje na Planecie Friedman?
Dehumanised Humanity, Super-Flu and the Sad Fate of Cranes: What Is Life Like on Planet Friedman?

Author(s): Ewa Szperlik
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego
Keywords: Josip Mlakić; dystopia; totalitarianism; Fukuyama’s “the end of man ;” new humanities

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the literary study presented in the article is Josip Mlakić’s Planet Friedman — a novel that follows the convention of the futurological anti-utopia. The work provides research material amenable to the application of diverse, interdisciplinary methodological tools. The starting point of refl ection on the post-apocalyptic vision of a totalitarian world after an ecological catastrophe is the concept of improved humanity (G. Lindenberg), while its main part concerns the public’s ambivalent attitudes towards new developments in biotechnology, seen by F. Fukuyama as “the end of man.” The literary dystopia presented by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian author also reflects the current dilemmas over the state of the world “managed” by man, which are becoming increasingly apparent in the fields of the new humanities (ecocriticism and animal studies). Moreover, in his novel Mlakić criticises the neoliberal policies related to globalisation, marginalisation and exclusion. The result of the conducted analysis is an attempt to show the function of literature as the source of reflection and the medium of expression (an invention ascribed to humans), in relation to the concept of the end of the man, cyborgisation and the twilight of anthropocentrism.

  • Issue Year: 177/2023
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 285-296
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Polish
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