Pigoons, Rakunks and Crakers: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Genetically Engineered Animals in a (Latourian) Hybrid World

Jay Sanderson

doi:10.5235/17521483.7.2.218

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Pigoons, Rakunks and Crakers: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Genetically Engineered Animals in a (Latourian) Hybrid World

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Pigoons, Rakunks and Crakers: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Genetically Engineered Animals in a (Latourian) Hybrid World

Jay Sanderson

Law and Humanities, Vol.7(2), pp.218-239

2013

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5235/17521483.7.2.218

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Abstract

Law

Performing Arts and Creative Writing

Historical Studies

genetically engineered animals

hybrid

latour

oryx and crake

In this article I develop a concept of hybridity for genetically engineered animals by referencing Bruno Latour in my reading of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003). While Oryx and Crake is full of hybrids, it (like many other novels incorporating hybrids) depicts a particular kind of hybrid: a hybrid that is a corporeal mixture of animal-animal, animal-human or animal-machine. Informed by Bruno Latour's theory of hybridity-a theory that weaves together all sorts of human and material actors-this article messes up Atwood's hybrid world, and brings to the fore the mixture of actors that allow pigoons, rakunks, wolvogs and Crakers to exist. In so doing this article proposes a hybrid reading of genetically engineered animals that takes individual actors seriously, but by the same token, does not neglect the messy and contingent weaving together of biotechnology, politics, attitudes, practices, values, commerce and law.

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Title: Pigoons, Rakunks and Crakers: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Genetically Engineered Animals in a (Latourian) Hybrid World
Authors: Jay Sanderson (Author) - Griffith University
Publication details: Law and Humanities, Vol.7(2), pp.218-239
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Date published: 2013
DOI: 10.5235/17521483.7.2.218
ISSN: 1752-1483
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; School of Law and Criminology - Legacy
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99448753302621
Output Type: Journal article

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