Navigating troubled waters: posthumanist vulnerability and entanglement in Richard Powers's Playground (2024)

Laguarta-Bueno, Carmen (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Richard Powers's most recent novels to date—The Overstory(2018), Bewilderment (2021), and Playground (2024)—en-gage with some of the environmental and technologicalthreats that loom over our planet, such as deforestation,species loss, the degradation of the ocean bottom, and therisks associated with the development of generative AI.Nevertheless, these novels also articulate a perspective onhow to be at home in a world marked by turmoil that goesbeyond hope and anxiety and that resonates with recentresearch in the field of critical posthumanism. This workfocuses mainly on Playground, a novel whose main subjectis the wonders of the oceans—which despite sustaining lifeon Earth face unprecedented threats. Drawing from criticalposthumanist thought, this paper explores how the novelbuilds on some of Powers's trademark themes and narra-tive conventions, while also opening up new creative andthematic possibilities. Ultimately, this paper argues that byhighlighting entanglement, evoking awe and wonder to-ward oceanic creatures, drawing on Indigenous knowledgesystems, and introducing a narrative twist at the end thatshatters readers' expectations, the novel conveys a mes-sage on how to navigate unsteady times that both reso-nates with and extends that of the preceding novels.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1111/oli.70022

Año: 2025

Publicado en: Orbis Litterarum (2025), [13 pp.]
ISSN: 0105-7510

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/H03-23R
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PID2022-137627NB-I00

Tipo y forma: Artículo (Versión definitiva)

Área (Departamento): Área Filología Inglesa (Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.)