Human, Cyborg, and Subjectivity in Good Hunting: A Posthuman Deconstructive Perspective

Abstract: In the era of the postmodern new technological revolution, interwoven relationships between humans and technology, humans and environment, humans and non-human beings are highly debated in academia. Good Hunting, a fiction written by multiple Hugo winner American Chinese Ken Liu, is a combination of postmodern steampunk and old Chinese folklore. It approaches literary sophistication by presenting binaries such as East and West, agricultural civilization and industrial civilization, misogyny and feminism, colonialism and anti-colonialism, and human beings and cyborgs. Interpreting Good Hunting as a posthuman literary text based on the aforementioned juxtaposed binaries, this paper probes into the relations among human beings , cyborgs , and subjectivity through a deconstructive perspective by analyzing how protagonists “Yan” and “Liang” lost and reconstructed their subjectivity through cyborgs in a posthuman context and how technology becomes the accomplice of capital in the postmodern society.

Key words: anthropocentrism; cyborg; Good Hunting; posthumanism; subjectivity

YUAN Jingjing VOLUME 1 APJHSS.pdf