Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction: The Posthuman Subject (Critical Approaches to Children's Literature)

"Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction examines the textual representation of technology in young adult fiction in a way that has rarely been attempted before. It is not a historical study or a survey of narrative plots, but instead takes a more conceptual approach that engages with the central ideas of posthumanism: such as the fragmented nature of posthuman identity, the concept of agency as distributed and collective and the role of embodiment in understandings of selfhood. Arguing that Young Adult fiction is on the cusp of a substantive paradigm shift, this book analyses the novels of emerging authors such as Cory Doctorow, Marissa Meyer and Mary E. Pearson. It demonstrates that these emerging writers are increasingly representing technology in a positive light that clearly resonates with posthumanism's interest in how technology can produce new and innovative forms of selfhood and identity"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-10 Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction....Pages 11-38 Narrating Posthuman Subjectivity....Pages 39-69 Digital Citizenship in the Posthuman Era....Pages 70-99 Reworking the Female Subject: Technology and the Body....Pages 100-127 Surveillance Societies: Privacy and Power in YA Fiction....Pages 128-154 Subjectivity in Cyberspace: Technorealism and the Merging of Virtual and Material Selves....Pages 155-185 Conclusion....Pages 186-191 Back Matter....Pages 192-205