Abstract
Many of Levi’s speculative stories narrate dystopian scenarios in which individuals express anxiety about the creeping power of technology which is reifying and auto-mating their posthuman bodies, affecting their physical and psychological freedoms. This article develops previous scholarship with a specific focus on the gendered dimension of Levi’s writing. I show how he critiques the problematic ways in which technologisation impacts specifically on women’s bodies. With a view to tracing the contemporary echoes of Levi’s work, I place his stories in dialogue with Nicoletta Vallorani’s recent, more explicitly feminist novels. I argue that Vallorani’s writing echoes and develops many of Levi’s concerns about how technology can be employed to con-strain our bodies and consciousness, and the explicitly gendered dimensions of this oppression. A critical reading of these texts alongside one another reveals striking resonances and confirms how Levi’s intuitions regarding the importance of critiquing unfettered technologised embodiment remain urgently relevant today.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 91–104 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Enthymema. International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory and Philosophy of Literature |
Volume | 33 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Oct 2023 |
Keywords
- Primo Levi
- Gender
- Agency
- Embodiment
- Nicoletta Vallorani