“Whatever comes after human progress”: Transhumanism, Antihumanism, and the Absence of Queer Ecology in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan

This chapter puts forward a reading of Lidia Yuknavitch’s dystopian science fiction novel The Book of Joan (2017). Its argument proceeds as follows. Firstly, Yuknavitch’s novel is situated in relation to Anglo-American science fiction’s longstanding engagement with the humanist ideal of progress and some of the literary tropes associated with it, most notably that of ageing. Secondly, the novel is read as mapping two contrasting trajectories for humanity: the acceleration of progress in the form of transhumanism, on the one hand, and the rejection of humanist progress and a turn toward antihumanism, on the other. Thirdly, it is argued that some of the tensions within the novel are best explained by the absence of a third possibility, namely queer ecology. Drawing on queer theory, the chapter concludes by arguing that queer ecology may be able to avoid the conflict between nature and culture which compromises Yuknavitch’s attempt to think ecologically.