Abstract :
This article examines the connections between posthumanism and narrative
form in Philip Pullman’s Clockwork. Beginning with an account of Pullman’s
materialism, it argues that the novel represents consciousness and agency as
emergent properties of matter, a position that manifests itself first in the tale’s
figurative language and later in the cybernetic inventions of Dr. Kalmenius. As
Pullman effaces the boundaries between animate and inanimate, human and nonhuman,
he generates uncanny effects that are best understood in terms of the
posthuman condition and narrative modes that reject liberal humanist models of
subjectivity. Clockwork’s uncanny elements, metafictive qualities, and distribution
of narrative voice across multiple perspectives thus represent narrative accommodations
demanded by the tale’s rejection of the Cartesian mind/body dualism that
grounds the liberal humanist subject. Clockwork’s acceptance of the posthuman
condition is, however, incomplete and anxiety-laden, and the fairy-tale transformation
of Prince Florian at the end of the novel represents a partial recuperation of
liberal humanist morality.
